Just days after an immigrant detained at a New Jersey facility became the first Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainee to test positive for the coronavirus, the Trump administration has confirmed that three migrant children in custody of the Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) have also tested positive. CNN reported that as of Thursday, 18 children have been tested.
“The children are in the care of one of the agency's facilities in New York,” the report continued. “The agency, which is charged with the care of unaccompanied children had earlier stopped placing children in New York amid the increase in coronavirus cases.” According to ORR, six workers from at least three different facilities in the state had already tested positive.
But even as the children are becoming some of the youngest victims yet of this pandemic, CNN reports ORR “will also stop releasing children to sponsors, such as a parent or relative, in the interim as well.” This is completely counterintuitive for the safety of kids when pediatricians say “even short periods of detention can cause psychological trauma and long-term mental health risks for children," which the American Academy of Pediatrics News reported in 2018.
Earlier this week, advocates urged a federal court to “release unaccompanied migrant children who have been in government custody for more than a month or transfer them to facilities where social distancing can be reasonably practiced,” CBS News reported. “The attorneys told the U.S. district court in Los Angeles that ‘the vast majority’ of the thousands of children in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement ‘spend all of their time in close proximity to other children and staff members.’”
ORR has approximately 3,500 kids in custody, and we don’t know how many of them should have been eligible for release yesterday but continue to be held in custody. Last year, attorneys alleged that ORR delayed the background checks for potential sponsors of unaccompanied kids at the now-closed prison camp in Homestead, Florida. Remember that ICE, in what advocates called “a new outrageous low,” also used these detained kids as human bait in order to arrest potential sponsors.
Detention is damaging to kids, and officials are multiplying that damage in the face of a pandemic, experts say. "Recent data confirm that even very young children are vulnerable to COVID-19,” Carlos Holguín of the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law told CBS News. “The current system, which tolerates the lengthy detention of children in congregate settings, increases their risk of physical and emotional harm, as well as the likelihood of human rights and civil rights violations.”
”There are about 3,500 unaccompanied migrant children incarcerated under the Office of Refugee Resettlement,” advocacy group Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) tweeted. “There is no plan to protect them and no plan that can protect them. Children MUST be reunited with their families immediately. We must #FreeThemAll.”