Picture 144 children forced to sleep in one room. Bunk beds stacked on top of one another; row after row after row. This isn’t a description of some 19th-century Dickensian workhouse, it’s the Homestead facility in South Florida where more than 1,700 unaccompanied immigrant children are being housed right now. It’s where children separated from their parents wait for an average of almost two months before being reunited with family.
As the family-separation crisis escalates and the corresponding need to shelter unaccompanied immigrant children grows, we’re seeing massive youth facilities emerge as a booming business. These large-scale youth facilities are rapidly expanding in the United States, despite the fact that they are not in the best interest of the children. Sheltering children by the hundreds intrinsically exposes children housed in a facility to an increased risk of neglect and abuse. And in recent months, that neglect has translated into the tragic and preventable deaths of six migrant youth.
This is the context that has driven members of Congress and organizations like Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to push for expanded oversight at facilities, including Homestead, the nation’s largest immigrant child shelter.
Last week, Homestead’s capacity of 2,350 was projected to expand to house up to 3,200 children — a proposal that, naturally, raises serious child-welfare concerns. We recognize that influx facilities, like Homestead, serve an important purpose when responding to emergencies and unexpected increases in the number of arriving unaccompanied children. The alternative in such moments would likely be children backing up in the Department of Homeland Security’s temporary holding cells.
It is important, however, that the government only use influx facilities as temporary, rapid-response facilities. This is particularly true as influx facilities can cost three times more per child than a standard facility. And, when these facilities are operated beyond such an initial emergency-response period, they should be subject to stringent child-welfare standards and oversight.
The federal government should be looking to other options for sheltering unaccompanied children.
For decades, faith-based organizations like ours have offered an alternative that is better for children, better for taxpayers: small-scale, community-based care, placing children in the least restrictive settings where they can receive individualized care and counseling. We place children in nurturing environments with foster families or in small-scale shelters with trauma-informed caseworkers.
With the growing humanitarian crisis at our border, there is no question we need to expand capacity to care for unaccompanied children — however, we should be seeking to expand child-friendly bed space, not large-scale facilities. Further, we must ensure that existing large-scale shelters are held accountable to protecting the children in their care and challenged to expand their services to meet the needs of vulnerable youth.
Finally, we must revise policies that have contributed to children remaining in federal care longer and exacerbated the need for large-scale facilities, while ensuring critical child welfare protections remain in place to adequately screen potential caregivers and promote safe family reunifications. For example, the government should immediately rescind the information-sharing agreement that has made many of these children’s family members fearful to come forward to take custody of their child.
Nelson Mandela once said: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”
It is our responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of every child in America — and this, too, applies to children who come to the United States seeking refuge.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah is President & CEO of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Bill Canny is executive director of Migration and Refugee Services at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The federal government called upon both organizations to help reunify children with their families following the family-separation crisis.
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