Migrant Children

Hundreds Of Migrant Minors Are Wrongly Sent To Adult Detention

October 6, 2024 Maurizio Guerrero, Scheer Post. Educate! Child Rights, Human Rights, Immigration, Migrant Children

Hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children are incorrectly placed each year in adult immigration detention centers in the U.S. due to the illegal use of dental X-rays to determine their age, according to immigration lawyers and rights groups. Widely discredited by the scientific community, these age determinations severely affect a minor’s chances of obtaining immigration relief and remaining in the country. Despite its impacts and scope, little is known about the practice of using dental X-rays to determine age. Federal agencies have refused to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests that seek to learn under what circumstances and how often dental and bone X-rays determine the age of unaccompanied minors.

Witness To A Social Crime: The Reality Of US Immigrant Child Detention

April 22, 2022 Eric London, WSWS. Educate! Child Detention, Human Rights, Immigration, Migrant Children

In the corporate media, political establishment and middle class “left,” the sound of sanctimonious appeals to America’s responsibility to defend democracy in Ukraine has grown deafening. Without a shred of critical thought, the Mighty Wurlitzer of war propaganda gets spinning. We are told that a Ukrainian government riddled with neo-Nazis is a beacon of democratic hope, that American bombs are being sent to save lives, that American sanctions which choke the world’s food supplies and throw hundreds of millions into the path of starvation are necessary humanitarian measures. The biggest lie of all is that the US stands for freedom and democracy. As Vice President Kamala Harris said at the onset of the war in early March, “Ukraine is a country in Europe.

Whistleblowers Step Forward With New Complaints Of Abuses At Site For Immigrant Children

August 10, 2021 Government Accountability Project. Educate! ICE, Migrant Children, Migrants, Whistleblowers

Today, Government Accountability Project, filed its second complaint with federal oversight agencies detailing abuses at the Fort Bliss, Texas Emergency Intake Site (EIS) for unaccompanied immigrant children. Government Accountability Project’s first complaint, dated July 7, 2021, is attached as an exhibit to this second complaint. The Fort Bliss EIS is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS’s) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The children are in the custody of ORR. Fort Bliss is one of several EISs holding them, ostensibly on a temporary basis. The information disclosed in the second complaint was provided by Arthur Pearlstein and Lauren Reinhold, current career federal civil servants and attorneys who volunteered to support ORR’s work.

End Migrant Warehousing

April 5, 2021 Lee Hall, Counterpunch. Create! Detention, Immigrants, Joe Biden, Migrant Children

The Biden-Harris administration is opening multiple detention camps to warehouse migrant kids. Thousands of unaccompanied children will go to military barracks at Fort Bliss, as the president seemed proud to announce to the press. The McAllen border patrol outpost where the Trump administration infamously separated families is currently closed—but not forever. For renovations. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has custody of 11,800 minors, at more than 100 sites nationwide. HHS receives children from the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a component of the Department of Homeland Security. The HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement quarantines unaccompanied minors, and then holds these kids until they turn 18 or are deported, unless relatives or other sponsors can be found to house them for the duration of their immigration court cases.

The View From Inside America’s Child Immigrant Detention Shelters

March 10, 2021 Staff, WSWS. Educate! Border Patrol, Joe Biden, Migrant Children, Torture

Across the United States, hiding in plain sight in strip malls and downtown blocks and amid the suburban sprawl, a record number of immigrant children—more than 13,000—are being held in shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. Representatives of the Republican and Democratic parties portray the shelters as safe and even pleasant. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Democratic Congressman Eliot Engel both said the shelters were “like summer camp.” But several immigrant children to whom the World Socialist Web Site spoke told a different story. These youth, all Central Americans separated from their families after crossing the US-Mexico border, were recently released from child shelters and volunteered to share their experiences on the condition of anonymity.

Migrant Parents Separated From Their Kids Still Can’t Be Found

October 22, 2020 Dominique Mosbergen, Huff Post. Educate! Deportations, Detention Centers, Family separation, Migrant Children

Lawyers tasked with identifying and reuniting families separated in 2017 and 2018 under the Trump administration’s so-called “zero tolerance” border policy say they still haven’t been able to locate the parents of at least 545 migrant children, according to a Tuesday court filing from the American Civil Liberties Union. A majority of these parents — “approximately two-thirds,” the filing said — are believed to have been deported to Central America without their children, some of whom were “just babies” at the time of the separation, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told CNN this week.

July 12: A Vigil To End Human Concentration Camps

July 6, 2019 Lights for Liberty. Resist! Detention Centers, Immigration, Migrant Children, Vigil

We are a coalition of people, many of whom are mothers, dedicated to human rights, and the fundamental principle behind democracy that all human beings have a right to life, liberty and dignity. We are partnering with international, national, regional and local communities and organizations who believe that these fundamental rights are not negotiable and are willing to protect them. On Friday July 12th, 2019, Lights for Liberty: A Vigil to End Human Concentration Camps, will bring thousands of people to locations worldwide as well as to concentration camps across the country, into the streets and into their own front yards, to protest the inhumane conditions faced by migrants.

#NoKidsIn Cages

June 16, 2019 No Kids In Cages. Resist! Border Patrol, Immigration, Migrant Children

Over 3000 children were separated from their parents at the border. They live in cages. Sleep on the floor. They cry out and are not comforted. They’ve spent an average of 154 days away from their parents. They’ve been shuttled around between 17 different states. They sleep under $0.68 blankets in freezing temperatures. This is not history. This is happening now. Hundreds more have been separated. 6 children have died. #NoKidsInCages is about the children. We cannot be a nation that separates families. For those who’ve forgotten, it’s time to remember and raise our voices. For those who didn’t know, it’s time to understand the plight of these innocent children.

Patricia Okoumou To Be Sentenced On March 19, 2019 For Statue Of Liberty Protest

March 5, 2019 RiseUp Newsletter of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, Popular Resistance Resist! Immigrant Rights, Migrant Children

At the height of the outrage against the U.S. government's separation of migrant children at the border, Patricia Okoumou climbed the Statue of Liberty on July 4, 2018. She said, “When I climbed the Statue of Liberty, I wanted to express the urgency of stopping our government’s reprehensible and inhumane treatment of migrant children ... I wanted no one to forget that children have been forced into cages and that we must do everything we can to stop the imprisonment of children ... Parents are torn apart with grief and very little has been done to unite the families.”

Companies Are Making Money From Child Migrant Camp

January 28, 2019 By Jerry Iannelli, Miaminewtimes.com Educate! Detention Centers, Immigration, Migrant Children, Profit

One of the less reported aspects of the United States deportation system is just how profitable it is. Private, for-profit companies and contractors are paid billions to carry out the administration's will. In short: People are getting rich by keeping immigrant kids behind bars. Last year, New Times reported the Trump administration had quietly reopened the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children. Since then, the place has filled with as many as 1,300 kids. The feds plan to add 1,000 more by the end of the year, according to the Associated Press. That's obviously bad for the kids.

Creating A Global Lost Generation

January 24, 2019 By Karen J Greenberg, Countercurrents.org Educate! Children, Migrant Children

Halfway through 2018, MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski hurled a mother-to-mother dagger at Ivanka Trump. How, during the very weeks when the headlines were filled with grim news of child separations and suffering at the U.S.-Mexico border, she asked, could the first daughter and presidential adviser be so tone-deaf as to show herself hugging her two-year-old son? Similarly, six months earlier, she had been photographed posing with her six-year-old daughter in the glossiest of photos. America had, in other words, found its very own Marie Antoinette, gloating while others suffered. “I wish,” Brzezinski tweeted at Ivanka, “you would speak for all mothers and take a stand for all mothers and children.”

Eight Year Old Boy Dies In Immigrant Detention On Christmas Day

December 26, 2018 Nomaan Merchant, Apnews.com Educate! Detention Centers, Immigration, Migrant Children, State Violence, Undocumented

HOUSTON (AP) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection ordered medical checks on every child in its custody Tuesday after an 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died, marking the second death of an immigrant child in the agency’s care this month. The death came during an ongoing dispute over border security and with a partial government shutdown underway over President Donald Trump’s request for border wall funding. The boy, identified by Guatemalan authorities as Felipe Gómez Alonzo, had been in CBP’s custody with his father, Agustin Gomez, since Dec. 18. CBP said in a statement late Tuesday that an agent first noticed the boy had a cough and “glossy eyes” at about 9 a.m. Monday.

After 7 Year Old Migrant’s Death US Investigates, Call For End To Child Detention

December 26, 2018 Staff, Ohchr.org Resist! Children, Immigration, Investigation, Migrant Children, Murder, State Violence

GENEVA (24 December 2018) ‑ A UN expert* today expressed his deep concern about the death of a seven-year-old Guatemalan migrant girl while she was in the custody of immigration authorities in the US. The UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe González Morales, called for a thorough investigation into how Jakelin Ameí Caal died. He also emphasised that the US should stop detaining children based on their migratory status. Although there have been different versions on the sequence of events and the health status of Jakelin, it is not disputed that the girl died in custody of US Customs and Border Protection...

HHS Cuts Funds For Cancer Research, HEAD Start & Women’s Shelters For Child Detention

September 21, 2018 Caitlin Dickson, Yahoo.com Educate! Cancer, Detention Centers, Immigration, Migrant Children, Research, Women

The Department of Health and Human Services is diverting millions of dollars in funding from a number of programs, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health, to pay for housing for the growing population of detained immigrant children. In a letter sent to Sen. Patty Murray, D.-Wash., and obtained by Yahoo News, HHS Secretary Alex Azar outlined his plan to reallocate up to $266 million in funding for the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, to the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Nearly $80 million of that money will come from other refugee support programs within ORR, which have seen their needs significantly diminished as the Trump administration makes drastic cuts to the annual refugee numbers.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Protested At Restaruarant

June 20, 2018 Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance Resist! Immigrants, Migrant Children

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was unable to have dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, DC as people discovered her presence and started chanting against her for her stand on immigration until she left. he was dining at MXDC Cocina Mexicana when a group of 10 to 15 protesters entered the restaurant and began chanting at her about the abusive immigration policy. The group chanted “shame!”, “end family separation!” “Sanctuary for all” and was incredulous that she was eating at a Mexican restaurant. One protester yelled, “How dare you spend your evening here eating dinner as you’re complicit in the separation and deportation of over 10,000 children separated from their parents? How can you enjoy a Mexican dinner as you’re deporting and imprisoning tens of thousands of people who come here seeking asylum in the United States? We call on you to end family separation and abolish ICE!”

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