President Trump’s broad immigration agenda is forcing unaccompanied migrant children to fend for themselves within a labyrinthine system that was once designed to guard them.
Since the start of the president’s second term, more than 6,200 minors have been held in detention. Yet despite ongoing legal challenges concerning the substandard conditions under which these undocumented youths are kept, the administration is moving ahead with plans for a new detention site capable of housing 3,000 unaccompanied children.
The proposed “Emergency Intake Facility,” discussed during a virtual roundtable on Tuesday, is intended to address the “surges” of unaccompanied minors at the southern border, The Independent reports. Surrounded by an eight-foot fence and staffed by “physicians, teachers and other ‘humanitarian care’ workers,” the center would house up to eight children per room, sharing a single toilet, shower, and sink, according to The Independent.
Although no site has been chosen yet for the detention complex, officials…appear prepared to move swiftly once contracts are awarded by year’s end, according to The Independent.
Yet when questioned, a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson told The Independent that “there are currently no immediate plans to establish such a facility,” describing the virtual roundtable as a “standard procedure” for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). “ORR will not wait for an influx to occur before seeking out a contractor who can meet the statutory requirements of an ORR facility,” the spokesperson added, underscoring the agency’s obligation to remain “prepared for any possible scenario at all times.”
Nevertheless, the Emergency Intake Facility is not the sole reason immigration advocates believe the Trump administration is now focusing on unaccompanied minor migrants.
By July 31, a long-standing federal contract had expired, “effectively dismantling the nationwide network of nearly 100 legal service providers that have offered counsel to more than 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant children,” according to the Acacia Center for Justice, a nonprofit immigration defense firm and the primary contract holder. Although a bridge contract was offered, Acacia Center for Justice stated that it declined the agreement because it would have “required legal service providers to turn over confidential client information that could be used to deport the very children [the organization is] committed to protecting as a condition of payment.”
Such a sweeping loss of legal representation matters because federal law requires to “ensure, to the greatest extent practicable…that all unaccompanied alien children…have counsel to represent them in legal proceedings…and protect them from mistreatment, exploitation, and trafficking.” But mere weeks after the contract expired, immigration judges are reportedly expediting thousands of minors’ removal cases and granting them only three weeks or less to secure attorneys, according to Bloomberg Law.
Protections for immigrant minors have also been pared back substantially, contributing to a deportation rate for unaccompanied youths that is three times higher than during Trump’s first term, and “more than 10,000 removal and voluntary departure orders [issued] each month for immigration minors,” according to an analysis by ProPublica.
Constructing large detention facilities for unaccompanied and largely unrepresented minors is certain to translate into even more deportations and removals. While such a plan may appeal to supporters of Trump’s broad deportation agenda, it also leaves thousands of children exposed to lasting trauma tied to confinement, and forces them to navigate a labyrinthine immigration system that was once designed to protect them.
