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US axes non-essential services for kids at migrant shelters
HOMESTEAD, United States, June 9, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – When reporters toured a
shelter for immigrant children in February, authorities showed off
classrooms, soccer fields and art studios to prove the kids were being
treated well.
This week President Donald Trump’s administration cancelled all that
special care, citing a lack of funding.
Some 13,200 children and teens, most of them Central American, are being
held in 168 shelters for minors in 23 states across the United States.
In all of them, activities that are not essential or not linked to the
children’s physical safety began to be cut this week.
“We don’t want to make these reductions but the law requires us to do so
until Congress appropriates additional funds,” Mark Weber, spokesman for the
Department of Health and Human Service (HHS), told AFP.
To address the crisis in handling undocumented migrants, HHS needs $2.88
billion dollars.
Minors who cross the southern US border without an adult are classified as
Unaccompanied Alien Children and sent to centers of the Office of Refugee
Resettlement, where they live until they can be reunited with their parents
or US-based relatives.
Many human rights groups deem these places as being akin to prisons or even
concentration camps.
A handful of activists demonstrated Friday outside a shelter in Homestead,
a town 40 miles (70 kilometers) south of Miami.
They tried to greet the children through the fence at the facility, and
waved red heart signs to show the youngsters were not alone.
A group of boys returned the gesture with smiles — and then made heart
shapes with their fingers.
In that facility there are 2,300 children aged 13 to 17, a spokesperson for
HHS told AFP.
If they turn 18 while in custody, they are handed over to Immigration and
Customs Enforcement.
“Behind me are a few of the kids that are incarcerated in the largest child
detention facility in the nation,” said Debby Wehking, a 68-year-old retired
school principal. “As a person who was born in Homestead, I’m embarrassed,
I’m angry, I’m disappointed.
“I don’t understand why everybody in my country is not on the street, 24/7,
complaining until this atrocity comes to an end,” she said.
– A visit to Homestead –
To show that it was far from a prison or a concentration camp, Weber
invited journalists to visit the facility back in February.
It is a set of white tents that have heating and air conditioning, and a
few buildings.
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The fences that surround the facility are covered by a green tarp that
makes it difficult to see through.
Inside, children walked in orderly lines, back and forth to different
activities.
Journalists were asked not to talk to them beyond saying “hello” and “good
morning.”
And so it was: a line of girls passed by the journalists and cheerfully
greeted everyone saying “Good morning!” in Spanish.
The dormitories — separate for boys and girls — were in one of the
buildings.
The 17-year-olds, however, slept apart, in a large space with about 150
berths in rows, lined up with just enough space between them for a person to
get through.
In one of the tents, a large one with metal tables and chairs, were the
classrooms where fifty teachers gave English and mathematics classes. This
program will be eliminated.
All the facilities were decorated with drawings made by children in their
art workshops, to give something of a cozy atmosphere to a tough situation.
This program will also be eliminated.
In one tent that functioned as a movie theater, where there was a TV and an
XBox, there was a drawing of a beach with a small boat, palm trees and
swings.
Below it was a pamphlet with warnings about sexual abuse and teen
pregnancy.
Just like the art program and the soccer program, it will all be on the
chopping block unless Congress grants the Department of Health and Human
Services the funds it needs.
“We have a humanitarian crisis at the border brought on by a broken
immigration system that is putting tremendous strain on the Office of Refugee
Resettlement and its Unaccompanied Alien Children program,” said Evelyn
Stauffer, a spokeswoman for the children and families section of HHS.
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