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  • 2018-05-26 (xsd:date)
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  • Did the U.S. Government Lose Track of 1,475 Migrant Children? (en)
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  • On 26 April 2018, the New York Times and the Associated Press both reported that the U.S. government had lost track of nearly 1,500 migrant children it had placed into the homes of caregivers. The alarming nature of the headlines prompted many readers to question the veracity of the reports, but they are apparently true. The Times and AP reports were based on statements made by Steven Wagner, acting assistant secretary of Administration for Children and Families for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on 26 April 2018 at a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee oversight hearing, statements which can be viewed in full here. According to that transcript, Wagner told senators: We note that this passage means that ORR made some effort to ascertain the status of children placed with sponsors and were unable to determine where some 1,475 of those children were, because those sponsors were unreachable by telephone or didn't respond. This doesn't mean those children are missing in the sense of being outside the home, control, or care of their guardians, but rather that the ORR couldn't verify their exact whereabouts at the moment. We reached out to HHS and were told by a spokesman that when children cross into the U.S. alone, their custody is transferred from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, to HHS's Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Children are then released to a sponsor in the U.S. who is selected and approved by ORR. These sponsors undergo background checks, and although the majority of such sponsors (85%) are parents or immediate family members, HHS told us, the remainder are typically more distant relatives or non-relatives whom the children had some previous relationship with: Responses to questions about the whereabouts of children from whom the HHS had distanced themselves once those children were placed with sponsors drew backlash from lawmakers at the 26 April oversight hearing. Senator Heidi Heitkamp, a Democrat from North Dakota, lambasted Wagner for failing to keep tabs on the unaccompanied children: The outcry over the fact that the federal government had lost track of hundreds of vulnerable children was compounded by outrage over news that immigration authorities were making good on new Trump administration directives to prosecute parents caught making unauthorized border crossings with their children, and in so doing separate the kids from their parents. The New York Times noted in April 2018 that 700 children, over 100 of them younger than four years old, had been taken from their parents at the border since October 2017. Social media users widely shared an Arizona Daily Star report describing the wrenching scene at a court hearing in which a distraught mother who had been separated from her sons, aged 8 and 11 years, was given no information on when they might be reunited: Senator Heitkamp slammed both HHS and the new policy in a statement her office sent to us: (en)
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