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Tender Age Shelters


Hugo Stiglitz

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"On June 23, three days after the executive order halting the separations, DHS announced it had developed a “central database” with HHS containing location information for separated parents and minors that both departments could access to reunite families. The inspector general found no evidence of such a database, the report said."

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The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” crackdown at the border this spring was troubled from the outset by planning shortfalls, widespread communication failures and administrative indifference to the separation of small children from their parents, according to an unpublished report by the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog.

The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the government’s first attempt to autopsy the chaos produced between May 5 and June 20, when President Trump abruptly halted the separations under mounting pressure from his party and members of his family.

The DHS Office of Inspector General’s review found at least 860 migrant children were left in Border Patrol holding cells longer than the 72-hour limit mandated by U.S. courts, with one minor confined for 12 days and another for 25.

Many of those children were put in chain-link holding pens in the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas. The facilities were designed as short-term way stations, lacking beds and showers, while the children awaited transfer to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services.


U.S. border officials in the Rio Grande Valley sector, the busiest for illegal crossings along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, held at least 564 children longer than they were supposed to, according to the report. Officials in the El Paso sector held 297 children over the legal limit.

The investigators describe a poorly coordinated interagency process that left distraught parents with little or no knowledge of their children’s whereabouts. In other instances, U.S. officials were forced to share minors’ files on Microsoft Word documents sent as email attachments because the government’s internal systems couldn’t communicate.

“Each step of this manual process is vulnerable to human error, increasing the risk that a child could become lost in the system,” the report found.

Based on observations conducted by DHS inspectors at multiple facilities along the border in late June, agents separated children too young to talk from their parents in a way that courted disaster, the report says.


“Border Patrol does not provide pre-verbal children with wrist bracelets or other means of identification, nor does Border Patrol fingerprint or photograph most children during processing to ensure that they can be easily linked with the proper file,” the report said.

“It is a priority of our agency to process and transfer all individuals in our custody to the appropriate longer-term detention agency as soon as possible,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol, said in a statement. “The safety and well-being of unaccompanied alien children . . . is our highest responsibility, and we work closely with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement to ensure the timely and secure transfer of all unaccompanied minors in our custody as soon as placement is available from HHS.”

In its Sept. 14 response to the inspector general’s report, DHS acknowledged the “lack of information technology integration” across the key immigration systems and “sometimes” holding children beyond the 72-hour limit.


Jim Crumpacker, the DHS official who responded to the report, said the agency held children longer mainly because HHS shelter space was unavailable. But he said transferring children to less-restrictive settings is a priority.

[‘Deleted families: What went wrong with Trump’s family separation effort]

On June 23, three days after the executive order halting the separations, DHS announced it had developed a “central database” with HHS containing location information for separated parents and minors that both departments could access to reunite families. The inspector general found no evidence of such a database, the report said.

“The OIG team asked several [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] employees, including those involved with DHS’ reunification efforts at ICE Headquarters, if they knew of such a database, and they did not,” it states. “DHS has since acknowledged to the OIG that there is no ‘direct electronic interface’ between DHS and HHS tracking systems.”

Inspectors said they continue to have doubts about the accuracy and reliability of information provided by DHS about the scope of the family separations.

In late June, a federal judge ordered the government to reunite more than 2,500 children taken from their parents, but three months later, more than 100 of those minors remain in federal custody.

The inspector general’s report also found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) restricted the flow of asylum seekers at legal ports of entry and may have inadvertently prompted them to cross illegally. One woman said an officer had turned her away three times, so she crossed illegally.

At one border crossing, the inspection team saw CBP attempt to increase its detention space by “converting former offices into makeshift hold rooms.”

The observations were made by teams of lawyers, inspectors and criminal investigators sent to the border amid concerns raised by members of Congress and the public. They made unannounced visits to CBP and ICE facilities in the border cities of El Paso and McAllen, Tex.

 

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Months later, and this is still an utter disgrace. The kid jails are a black mark on us, and in the future will be put up there with the trail of tears and the Japanese internment camps as one of our darkest moments. The pain and suffering we have caused to children is immeasurable, and no amount of reperations that we WILL pay can repay for what we have done. Fuck Trump, and anybody that has, and will, support him and his administration.

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New satellite images show the growth in detention camps for children.  Tornillo, Texas. The comparison between June 19 and September 13 is quite stunning. 

https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/10/03/new-satellite-imagery-shows-growth-detention-camps-children

Edited by Horn Under a Bad Sign
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1 hour ago, Pancho Negro said:

 

Misleading tweet. No adoptions cited in either the linked article at The Hill nor in the original source article published by the AP which, if you want to skip the middleman and social media spin, you can read here:

https://apnews.com/97b06cede0c149c492bf25a48cb6c26f

Yes, it's a concern. But as far as I can tell it hasn't happened yet. 

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  • 2 weeks later...


“According to federal government data, GEO Group receives more taxpayer dollars for immigration detention than any other ICE contractor. In FY 2017, GEO Group received $184 million, followed by Corrections Corporation of America/CoreCivic that received $135 million for immigration detention related service obligations.”
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  • 5 weeks later...

I know it's been said before, but the catch and release program (I guess sometimes or most of the time with tracking bracelets) demonstrated very good success with getting people to show up for court. But that wouldn't inflict pain on these children and their parents. No amount of shame will be enough for this entire administration and the complicit Rs in Congress.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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The Latest: US nixed FBI checks for teen migrant camp staff
52 minutes ago
TORNILLO, Texas (AP) — The Latest on a desert detention camp for migrant children (all times local):

12:15 p.m.

A new government watchdog memo says the Trump administration waived rigorous background checks for all staff working at the nation’s largest detention camp for migrant children .

The memo, obtained exclusively by The Associated Press, says the former director of the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement personally signed off on sidestepping requirements for child abuse and neglect checks at the tent city in Tornillo, Texas.

None of the 2,100 staff has gone through FBI fingerprint checks either, but the Tornillo contractor says staff are vetted in other ways.

Tornillo now holds 2,324 migrant teens, and has expanded recently.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General memo confirms AP’s reporting that teens held at Tornillo are receiving inadequate mental health care.

A department spokesman did not immediately provide comment Tuesday.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not even a fucking hug.

 

Separate a child from his or her family. And then deny that child basic human contact and affection. Seriously. Imagine your kid. Living in detention. And denied the most basic human emotional need. Jesus fucking Christ. That’s how you create a broken sociopath. And it’s how you prove yourself to be a monster.

 

We will answer to history for this. And history will be brutally honest and harsh.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Terrible story but I'm not sure this one can be pinned on the Border Control, because it sounds like they did everything right in this case.

They took the boy to the hospital where he was diagnosed with a cold and given antibiotics (which don't treat a cold since it's a virus, fyi).  He was released from the hospital and later was brought back when he started vomiting again.  

Sounds like this one is on the broke. American healthcare system, but I'll wait to pass judgement until we have more facts.

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22 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

It’s on us no matter how you slice it. 

Perhaps, but you posted it on the Tender Age thread and we're not even sure this child was held at one.  The story mentions that the Border Patrol took the boy's father with them to the hospital. 

Anyway, I just think we've all become a bit hair triggered when it comes to stories like this and are too quick to assign blame.  It might do us good to pump the brakes a little but before grabbing the pitchforks...lest become too much like the GOP.

Trump's policies are barbaric and cruel, but I tend to think most of the actual Border Patrol workers are doing their jobs the best they can under the circumstances.  Just my opinion.

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17 minutes ago, DixonHur said:

 

Anyway, I just think we've all become a bit hair triggered when it comes to stories like this and are too quick to assign blame.  It might do us good to pump the brakes a little but before grabbing the pitchforks...lest become too much like the GOP.

Trump's policies are barbaric and cruel, but I tend to think most of the actual Border Patrol workers are doing their jobs the best they can under the circumstances.  Just my opinion.

Overall You’re right on assumptions, but sadly at this point I see no reason to implicitly trust BP  or take them at their word that they are “good” for “doing their jobs the best they can” without evidence before hand: 

Throwing out water

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6 hours ago, DixonHur said:

Trump's policies are barbaric and cruel, but I tend to think most of the actual Border Patrol workers are doing their jobs the best they can under the circumstances.  Just my opinion.

When we visit relatives in Alpine, and head over to El Paso, or  Big Bend, Terlingua, etc., we inevitably encounter BP often enough these days to dread it, especially when our Hispanic in-laws are with us.   Our sister-in-law (Hispanic) in particular has pretty much stopped visiting relatives along the border, or at least doesn’t bring her kids, because she’s scared shitless that she will encounter BP who are having a bad day and looking to make somebody miserable.  

I know there are good ones, but I will take dealing with big-city cops on steroids over dealing with BP on a fishing expedition any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.    Well, maybe not Louisiana cops, but BP is getting damned close to them.  

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  • 4 weeks later...


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