Officials at the government agency that handles unaccompanied minors who cross the U.S.-Mexico border say orders have been issued not to release the children to their relatives here in the United States.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Government sources say they have been ordered for the past six weeks not to release undocumented children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone to join their parents and relatives. The Trump administration now officially says it has not imposed a moratorium on those releases, but advocates across the country also say they don't see children being reunited with their families. Lawyers have warned that the longer children remain in custody, the worse for their health and safety. Reporter Mark Bettencourt of the California newsroom has been following along. Hello Mark.
MARK BETANCOURT: Hello.
KELLY: Start with the kids. Who are they? Why are they even under federal custody?
BETANCOURT: So these are children under 18, from toddlers to teenagers, who are crossing the border without parents or guardians. And when they are apprehended by immigration officials, they are transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which typically places them in group shelters. There are currently about 2,400 children in shelters across the country. And most of these children actually came to the US to join their parents or other family members. In the immigration system, these adults are called sponsors, and the government must vet them to make sure they are who they say they are and can be released to the children.
KELLY: But that's not happening. Children are not given to sponsors.
BETANCOURT: Right. Well, a federal field specialist, an ORR employee whose job it is to sign releases, told me that in early November their supervisor gave them a verbal order to stop all releases to sponsors, even those who had passed the vetting process. The person spoke to NPR only on condition of anonymity because he feared he would be fired for speaking out. But two other ORR officials also said they were aware of the order.
I also spoke with eight immigration attorneys across the country in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Charlotte, Washington, DC, and they all told me they see the same thing with the children they represent. They are not given to sponsors. And everyone said: this is not normal.
KELLY: So what's going on?
BETANCOURT: Well, I got some recent ORR data on these releases, and in October, before this apparent moratorium, the government was releasing about four children a day to sponsors. This is a little more than 100 children per month. But over the past month and a half, they have transferred only four children to sponsors. No one I spoke to knew why these children ran away, nor did anyone else.
What we have known for some time is that the Trump administration has added new requirements for screening sponsors, such as DNA testing of family members and fingerprinting of all adults in the household where the child will live. This has really slowed things down over the last few months, but this virtual halt to releases is new. People I've talked to both inside and outside of ORR say they've never seen reunions just grind to a halt across the board like they are now.
KELLY: So we talked about your reporting and what you've learned about what's going on. Do we know why?
BETANCOURT: Well, first of all, the Administration for Children and Families (ph), which oversees ORR, sent me an email saying that the office, quote, “has not put a moratorium on sponsorship releases.” They also mentioned the, quote, “enhanced review policy” that I just mentioned, but they didn't explain why most of the releases just stopped.
The lawyers I spoke with said that the delay in release does take a toll on the children, and that all this pressure – first, the drawn-out vetting process, and now you're being told, look, you're not going to leave federal custody anytime soon, and we don't know why – is causing some children to reconsider whether it's worth trying to stay in the US. they simply decide to leave the country.
KELLY: Mark Bettencourt is a freelance reporter for the California Newsroom. Thank you.
BETANCOURT: Thank you.
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