As you walk to your school, job or meeting, thousands of immigrant children wander around in “mini-jails,” also known as shelter facilities, yearning for the day they will be allowed to see their family again.
Last week, about 2,000 children were moved in the middle of the night from different shelters across the United States to Tornillo, Texas, a desert city that now looks like a new city: “tent city.”
You don’t have to be a psychologist to know that separating children from their parents is detrimental to their physical and mental health.
I have been shocked on different occasions while reading and listening to the countless testimonies of the poor treatment, the education deficiencies and the exasperating experiences these children go through.
Children cannot be prosecuted along with their parents; therefore, after being detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services send the children to the shelters while their parents are taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to www.dhs.gov.
The children have to stay in the shelters for days, or sometimes months, where they are only allowed one or two hours of recreation time per day until they can find a sponsor (parent, guardian, other adult relative, or foster care provider) or until their parents’ or legal guardian’s immigration cases are resolved.
This situation did not start today or last week. The spark that started the fire was President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, which took effect on April 6. This policy “prohibits both attempted illegal entry and illegal entry into the United States by an alien,” according to the U.S. Justice Department website, www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-announces-zero-tolerance-policy-criminal-illegal-entry.
Although there have been many administration officials, including Trump, who claim the Democrats’ laws are causing the separation of immigrant families, there are no existing laws or policies that force the government to separate such families. I find it interesting how several Republican lawmakers and administration officials use the immigrant children issue as a tool for drawing supporters from the Democratic Party, even if it means creating false statements.
Contrary to what these officials claim, the Trump administration created and supported the “zero tolerance” policy. The Memorandum for Federal Prosecutors Along the Southwest Border by Attorney General Jeff Sessions released on April 6 clearly states that “if adopting such a policy requires additional resources, each [United States Attorney’s Office along the Southwest Border] shall identify and request such additional resources.”
There is no denial of the fact that every country has to have some kind of policy to control the influx of immigrants. However, the reason why the “zero tolerance” policy has caused so much turmoil and chaos is simply because it involves innocent children.
As an article published by the Texas Tribune reports, there were 5,099 children living in shelters as of Sept. 20, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, which is the unit charged with regulating the “federally funded shelters.” Also, the article states the Rio Grande Valley and the Houston area have the largest number of Texas shelters with 10 and nine facilities, respectively.
Private “nonprofit” companies, such as Southwest Key Programs, have been using the situation as a means of profit. Regardless of how they portray themselves in the media, thanks to the multiple testimonies from children, ex-employees and reporters, the credibility of these organizations has been broken.
Juan Sanchez, chief executive of Southwest Key Programs, nearly earned $1.5 million in 2016, according to The Washington Post.
Even though Trump rescinded the “zero tolerance” policy in June, there have been reports of cases where children who cross the border are still being separated from their parents or guardians, besides the hundreds, if not thousands, of children who still remain in the shelters.
The confusing and exhausting journey is still far from over for many of the migrant children who are still housed in the shelters. Unfortunately, the issue will still be used as a political and profit-generating tool. This situation is just part of the same old political game, the only difference is that, here, the children are not playing.
