Branda, a migrant mom from El Salvador, finally got the chance to be reunited with her 7-year-old son Kevin after being forcibly separated from each other at the U.S./Mexico border on May 27. But first, it would cost her $576.20.
The federal government hasn’t just forcibly separated thousands of migrant kids from their parents with no plan on how or when to reunite them, it’s also forcing the parents and U.S. families of children who can be released to U.S. homes to pay exorbitant fees to cover not just the kids’ airfare, but the airfare of their escorts as well.
This has been existing policy of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), but during a surge of unaccompanied minors coming to the border in the Obama years, this was waived. “Shelter operators were instructed to pay for transportation to enable families to reunite more quickly, and were then reimbursed by the government, said Bob Carey, who led the refugee resettlement office during the Obama administration.”
Not so under this administration. In Brenda’s case, she had to take out a money order for Kevin and his escort in order to fly them from Miami to Virginia, which she then handed over at the airport. This amounts to ransom for children, and at the expense of immigrant families that are already struggling financially.
Another immigrant woman was told that she needed to pay $4,000 to fly her niece, nephew, and their escort from Texas to California. “They were there a month, until she convinced them that she could not pay, said Fred Morris, president of the San Fernando Valley Refugee Children Center, a nonprofit that helped her locate the children. The siblings arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday.”
It’s not just money that these families are worried about. As part of sponsoring a child, ORR demands a massive amount of information from families, including rent receipts, proof of income, and fingerprints. There may even be home visits. ORR “has made it clear that the requirements are intended to make sure children are not released to traffickers, and will be well cared for in their new homes.” But what could be more terrifying for sponsors who may be undocumented than to hand over fingerprints to the Trump administration?
One Guatemalan migrant, who asked the New York Times to not identify her, struggled with sponsoring two children not just due to financial reasons, but because of the undocumented status of several other relatives as well. “I wouldn’t even be able to ask someone else to be their sponsor. All my family and friends are undocumented and afraid,” she told the New York Times. The childrens’ attorney, Crystal Fleming, said the woman earns $200 a week and ended up having to borrow the $2,500 required to fly them to New York.
Sheer cruelty aside, keeping children locked up and away from their parents and families makes no sense financially. “Each day that a child remains in a facility costs the government upwards of $600 a day, and costs can rise to as much as $1,000 daily if a provider has to absorb new children on short notice,” Carey told the New York Times. “It’s counterintuitive to keep a child in care.” But since when has the Trump administration cared about fiscal responsibility, much less the well-being of a brown child?
“The government,” said Neha Desai, director of immigration at the National Center for Youth Law, “is creating impossible barriers and penalizing poverty.”
