The daily beast
NGOs shocked by the US ‘”terrible” reaction to the rise in migrants
Adrees Latif / Reuters What caught Texas Rep. August Pfluger on his first visit to an immigration center along the border was the look into the eyes of the young migrants: “You see the look in their eyes and it’s just – I can’t describe it You hardly feel like you’ve just been through something terrible, “Pflugar said in an interview on Tuesday, the day after touring the facility in El Paso, Texas, which is already overcrowded with over 1,000 migrants. The record numbers of children come from Central America continues daily without her parents on the border between the US and Mexico. Troubling details of their travels and the conditions they live in in Homeland Security facilities emerge, creating a crisis for the new government in Biden that has been criticized from both sides of the aisle. At a customs and border protection site in Donna, Texas, young migrants have reported being without showers or access to nature for days, their lawyers told reporters this week. In El Paso, where Pflugar visited the house with a delegation of his Republicans, children slept on thin mats on concrete floors. Families trapped at the border say Biden betrayed them. What the government is doing is causing these children to be exploited, ”Pflugar said. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Congress on Wednesday morning the surge was the result of years of bad policies by the Trump administration and the Biden government has rushed to set up ad hoc locations to house the flood of children. In Dallas, immigration officials are preparing a downtown convention center for the arrival of unaccompanied migrants expected on Wednesday, the Department of Health and Human Services said in Midland, Texas. In Midland, Texas, 248 teenagers moved to a former oil warehouse that reopened over the weekend . In the days that followed, others were added, Pflugar, this city. The week-long journey for migrants from Central America can be arduous, through punishing terrain and often with limited supplies. In many cases, migrants are trying to pay unreliable smugglers thousands of dollars to avoid violence and economic instability in their home countries, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and two recent hurricanes. Reports of sexual abuse and exploitation along the way are common. When unaccompanied minors reach the border, their conditions may not improve significantly at first. In interviews and public appearances this week, lawyers, lawmakers, and federal officials described an immigration system buckling under the weight of the recent surge.Paso is not intended for child placement, and some have already reached or exceeded capacity, forcing immigration officials to Fly migrants to less crowded areas along other parts of the border. “These border guards are absolutely terrible,” said Paola Luisi. Director of Families Belong Together, a loose coalition of more than 250 groups that provide various undocumented services on both sides of the southern border. “Of the six children who died under the Trump administration, almost all but one were in CBP facilities.” According to a recent court order, migrant children should only stay in the reception facilities for up to 72 hours before they are moved in government-funded shelters better equipped, despite the Department of Homeland Security admitting on Tuesday that this schedule has not always been met. Transfer of children from border police to HHS is not always accomplished, “Mayorkas said in a statement Tuesday. In a press conference last week, Troy Miller, the acting CBP commissioner, said showers will be provided at least every 48 hours and migrants on Saturday, the Biden administration directed Federal Emergency Management Agency staff to the border to open new locations and address the overcrowding to reduce. Since then, officials have begun plans to move migrants from the CBP facilities to emergency rooms operated by the Department of Health and Human Services, such as the new facilities in Dallas and Midland, before the children can be taken to a shelter. Jeff Hild, an assistant assistant secretary to HHS, a NASA airfield in Mountain View, Calif., And another location in Homestead, Florida, is also considering using it in the near future, the New York Times reported to The Camp with one Capacity of 700 people, which historically housed oil and gas workers, has bedrooms with attached bathrooms that the young migrants are expected to stay in for two to four weeks, according to Pfluger, who also toured the facility on Monday, Pfluger said. that, due to its “turnkey nature”, the location will offer sufficient space for quarantine in the event of a COVID outbreak. The White House, which has scrupulously avoided the “crisis” label for the extermination of undocumented children, claims the surge is a consequence of the Trump administration’s immigration policies – and not the result of migrants who see the new administration as the green light consider. Many of the children now entering the US were initially turned back under the migrant protection protocols last year, leaving them stranded in northern Mexico until Biden reversed the migrant protection protocols for minors earlier this year. Adults and families presenting at the border are still being turned away as part of a public health policy first introduced by the Trump administration in the early days of the pandemic, while the Biden team has since lifted this blockade for unaccompanied minors . “There have been a lot of children in suspension in northern Mexico,” said Leah Chavla, a senior policy advisor for the women’s refugee commission’s migrant rights and justice program. “There are a lot of people that the last administration really put at risk and it’s accelerating very quickly.” The inherent difficulty of finding safe housing in the middle of a pandemic has compounded the problem. “Without COVID, the situation would not change.” It’s nowhere near that level, ”said Chavla. In these extenuating circumstances, the government has withdrawn many of its stated policies – as well as legal regulations – regarding the conditions under which children may be held in detention centers for immigrants. Like the three-day policy prescribed by the courts under the so-called Flores Agreement. The government has labeled the current housing crisis the least bad of a “few good options,” as White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, “None. These border guards are designed for children and we want them in shelters as soon as possible and then bring them to apartments, ”Psaki told reporters on Monday, adding that FEMA’s involvement would hopefully speed up this process. “The president is very focused on speeding up what is happening at the border at every step of the process.” Mayorkas was concerned about the Biden administration’s reversal of Trump-era deterrence policy on Wednesday during an appearance before the House Homeland Security Committee, which Republicans were blamed for the recent surge in migrant children on the border. “Why on earth did this administration … basically destroy the Trump administration’s asylum deals with Mexico and Central America?” asked MP Michael McCaul (R-TX), who called Trump’s policies of restricting access to the asylum process “masterful” in preventing illegal immigration and called the current situation at the border a “crisis” has the use of family separation as a Deterrent Method Strongly Rejected: “A crisis is when a nation is ready to tear a nine-year-old child out of the hands of its parents and separate that family to prevent future immigration. For me this is a crisis, “Mayorkas told McCaul, adding that the Biden administration was working to” ensure that we have a functioning immigration system and that migration to our country is safe, orderly and humane. “But to nonprofits working on behalf of children in the immigration system, those promises sound hollow. The number of unaccompanied minors on the southern border has previously angered Washington politicians, particularly in 2014 and 2019 under the Obama and Trump administrations, but state infrastructure has not been updated to address the problem, Sarah Pierce said , Policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a liberal think tank in Washington. “I am delighted to hear the rhetoric from this government that they are aware of this issue and that they are interested and changed. The problem is that they are facing a major challenge on the southern border and all of our infrastructures and procedures on the southern border Reform to Allow More Mixed Flows It’s difficult to face this challenge, “said Pierce.” The idea that DHS, with a budget of $ 49 billion, can’t figure this out is the wrong talk for me, ” said Luisi of Families Belong Together, noting that nonprofit groups that stayed high and dry during the Trump administration were still able to cobble together critical services for undocumented people. “A group of Ragtag NGOs could do it on a millionth of the budget … because a child’s life was at stake.” “The administration really has an opportunity here to live by its values,” added Luisi, “to think about how we please the children’s families.” On the options to ease the pressure on the CBP facilities , proponents say the expansion of the number of temporary housing facilities such as those in Dallas and Midland, as well as the potential acceleration of the licensing of traditional care facilities for child placement include ORR or CBP custody. The Biden government also recently lifted some restrictions on the number of beds Where traditional shelters that house migrant children, have schooling for the children and are connected to family members or care sponsors in the U.S. have come under pressure due to social distancing policies that require a top-down rethinking of these more permanent solutions below in dealing with children in immigration gsystem, said Marielena Hincapie, Executive Director of the National Immigration Rights Center Root Cause, because ultimately the crisis actually lies in the country of origin, “said Hincapie. “This is about my managing the migration and managing a migration flow that we expected! Because none of this is unexpected. “Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside delves deeper into the stories that matter to you. Learn more.
