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The Trump administration has a record number of migrant children in detention, the New York Times reports, and not because there’s been a surge in border crossings. Instead, it appears officials have been releasing fewer children to relatives or other sponsors already in the U.S., continuing to leave them languishing in custody.
Numbers show 12,800 migrant kids are in Health and Human Services (HHS) custody, the vast majority of them minors who came to the border by themselves. More than 400 of these children came with their parents, but were kidnapped from them under the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy. By comparison, HHS had 2,400 children in custody in May 2017:
The huge increases, which have placed the federal shelter system near capacity, are due not to an influx of children entering the country, but a reduction in the number being released to live with families and other sponsors, the data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services suggests. Some of those who work in the migrant shelter network say the bottleneck is straining both the children and the system that cares for them.
Officials don’t appear to be making any effort to release kids from traumatic facilities. Instead, the administration is only ramping up the so-called “temporary” prison camp for migrant kids in Tornillo, Texas, all the while making it harder for relatives or others to sponsor kids. HHS has been requiring “that all adults in the household where a migrant child will reside submit fingerprints to Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” the New York Times continues, understandably frightening families, because why should they trust ICE?
If these facilities do reach capacity because officials aren’t releasing children, it’ll only be an excuse for the administration to create more of these “temporary” prison camps. Children belong in freedom, not in detention. “You are flying in the face of child welfare,” said Congress member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, “and we’re doing it by design. You drive up the cost and you prolong the trauma on these children.”