Child Detainees Battle an Unforgiving System Alone

By Maya Schenwar, TruthOut.org. Posted June 27, 2008.

Undocumented children entering the US alone must confront barriers that extend far beyond the border. If apprehended, they're met with a sometimes-brutal detention period, followed by a trial under a legal system that treats them the same as apprehended adults, according to children's rights advocates and recent reports by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General's Office (OIG) and the Government Accountability Office.

OIG estimates that more than 10,000 unaccompanied and undocumented children will be detained this year, not counting children who are immediately deported upon contact with Homeland Security. Most travel from Mexico or Central America. Kids migrate alone for some of the same reasons that adults do: to reunite with family or to escape persecution. Many have experienced child-specific threats, like assault by youth gangs and recruitment for special roles in organized crime, according to Sarnata Reynolds, director of the Refugee Program at Amnesty International USA. A smaller percentage, driven by devastating poverty, come to find work.

Children apprehended at the border are taken to Border Patrol stations, frequently remaining in concrete cell blocks for days on end and sometimes being transferred repeatedly to different stations before being handed over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to Michelle Brane, director of the Detention and Asylum Program at the Women's Commission, who has extensively investigated the treatment of unaccompanied children. Children are then placed in more permanent facilities to wait for their court dates.

"Generally before their placement, they're held in bad conditions," Brane told Truthout, noting that children are often not informed of their legal situation or what the future will bring. Although the OIG notes that 84 percent of children are placed within three days, some wait for much longer, especially during the Resettlement Office's "high season," when the system may see a backlog.

Children are eventually placed in foster care, shelters or "secure" or "staff-secure" facilities (the equivalents of juvenile detention centers). According to Brane's findings, the secure facilities are overused: due to inadequate, hurried evaluations, children with behavior or mental problems that could be otherwise resolved are often sent to "secure" detention centers.

Detention Conditions

Abuse and neglect within secure facilities are not uncommon. Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid, a nonprofit legal agency, recently filed lawsuits against two detention centers that were committing "egregious abuses" against unaccompanied undocumented children, Legal Aid attorney Erica Schommer told Truthout.

Eight immigrant youths suing the Abraxas Hector Garza Treatment Center in San Antonio describe being beaten repeatedly, so severely that several required hospitalization. The abuse continued even after it was reported to their caretakers' supervisors. In Nixon, Texas, ten detained young people filing a Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid lawsuit allege repeated assault and retaliation upon reporting the abuse. Of course, most abused detainees do not have access to pro bono lawyers and cannot hope to sue; much more often than not, their stories go untold.

According to a June report by the Government Accountability Office, child detainees are not immune to the neglect suffered by their adult counterparts, widely publicized earlier this month. The report cites the example of the Cowlitz County Juvenile Detention Center in Washington State, where, despite federal mandates, "no medical screening was performed at admission and first aid kits were not available, as required." The facility also ignored requirements to maintain minors' medical records on site.

For the most part, however, the facilities' violations are kept from the public eye - and the eye of the federal government doesn't see much of them either, according to a recent OIG report noting that "interviews with Department of Unaccompanied Children's Services central office officials indicate that little oversight of facilities occurs." Federal officials aren't required to meet with children when they visit the facilities, so direct feedback is next to nonexistent.

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Maya Schenwar is an editor and reporter for Truthout.

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