Friday, May 25, 2018

HHS Official Says Agency Lost Track of Nearly 1,500 Unaccompanied Minors | Trafficked in America | FRONTLINE | PBS | Official Site

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/hhs-official-says-agency-lost-track-of-nearly-1500-unaccompanied-minors/

HHS Official Says Agency Lost Track of Nearly 1,500 Unaccompanied Minors

In this Aug. 11, 2017, photo U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents pick up immigrants suspected of crossing into the United States illegally along the Rio Grande near Granjeno, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

A top official from the Department of Health and Human Services came under fire during congressional testimony on Thursday over how the agency tracks unaccompanied minors after they are released to family or other sponsors inside the United States.

Steven Wagner, the acting assistant secretary of the agency's Administration for Children and Families, faced a barrage of questions from senators on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations over why HHS does not track unaccompanied minors who fail to appear at their immigration court hearings. The agency has faced increased scrutiny following a scathing 2016 report from the committee that found it failed to protect unaccompanied minors from traffickers and other abuses.

"It's just a system that has so many gaps, so many opportunities for these children to fall between the cracks, that we just don't know what's going on — how much trafficking or abuse or simply immigration law violations are occurring," said the committee's Republican chairman, Sen. Rob Portman.

In 2014, at least 10 trafficking victims, including eight minors, were discovered during a raid by federal and local law enforcement in Portman's home state of Ohio. As FRONTLINE examined in the recent documentary Trafficked in America, HHS had released several minors to the traffickers. The committee said the case was due to policies and procedures that were "inadequate to protect the children in the agency's care."

After unaccompanied minors arrive in the United States, often to reunite with family members or to flee violence or poverty in their home countries, they are typically transferred from border patrol or customs officers to the custody of HHS, which often reunites the minors with a relative or another sponsor. The department is supposed to place check-in phone calls 30 days after a minor's placement, but during the hearing, Wagner acknowledged gaps in that system.

Between October 2016 and December 2017, he said, the agency was unable to locate almost 1,500 out of the 7,635 minors that it attempted to reach — or about 19 percent. Over two dozen had run away, according to Wagner, who said the agency did not have the capacity to track them down.

Sponsors are meant to ensure that minors show up at their immigration hearings. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) pressed Wagner on why more than half of unaccompanied minors in 2017 did not show up to their immigration hearings. When asked how HHS tracks the missing children, Wagner said that finding out whether children have attended their immigration hearing is not part of its protocol.

"We do not know who is showing up and who isn't," he said. "We don't know those kids … We don't follow up to ensure they go to the hearing."

Wagner told the committee that since February 2016, HHS has gone to greater lengths to verify the identity of potential sponsors of unaccompanied minors, and worked to crack down on the ability of sponsors to use fraudulent documents during the placement process. A new agreement reached this month between HHS and the Department of Homeland Security establishes policies for the agencies to better share information to help screen potential sponsors.

Senators also expressed concern that state and local officials are not usually notified when unaccompanied minors are placed in their jurisdiction. Wagner said that it was an "issue of practicality" that would require contacting a substantial list of local agencies.

"If a child is being, for instance, kept at home and abused by a sponsor, and a local school doesn't even know the child is supposed to be going there, then some of the usual triggers that we have for protecting children can't be triggered," Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) said.

Wagner agreed to look into notifying states and localities, as did James McCament, the deputy under secretary for the Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans at the Department of Homeland Security.

Throughout the session, senators grew frustrated that more than a year had passed since the two agencies had agreed to deliver a joint memo outlining their roles in protecting minors.

"It has been protracted, absolutely," said McCament.

"Get this done," Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.) told officials from both agencies. "Way too much time has passed."

In an interview with FRONTLINE for Trafficked in America, Portman said that HHS cannot ignore its responsibility for unaccompanied minors.

"We've got these kids," he said. "They're here. They're living on our soil. And for us to just, you know, assume someone else is going to take care of them and throw them to the wolves, which is what HHS was doing, is flat-out wrong. I don't care what you think about immigration policy, it's wrong."

Elyssa D. Durant

Research & Policy Analyst

Columbia University, New York

Neglect & Abuse of Unaccompanied Children by U.S. Customs and Border Protection - ACLU of San Diego and Imperial Counties

The Report via ACLU

https://www.aclusandiego.org/civil-rights-civil-liberties/

Neglect & Abuse of Unaccompanied Children by U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Published: May 23, 2018

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties ("CRCL") is the agency within DHS that is, according to its own website, responsible for "promoting respect for civil rights and civil liberties in policy creation and implementation," and for "investigating and resolving civil rights and civil liberties complaints filed by the public."

In response to our FOIA request, CRCL released approximately 4,600 pages of records, consisting of complaints submitted by legal service providers and immigrants' rights advocates on behalf of migrant children detailing various forms of abuse. The CRCL records also consist of internal agency records documenting the limited investigations it undertook.

The International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago School of Law has written a report highlighting the experiences of migrant children (often asylum-seekers) who suffered verbal, physical, or sexual abuse from CBP officials. The appendix contains all of the original records cited in the report.

REPORT: Neglect & Abuse of Unaccompanied Children by U.S. Customs and Border Protection

Appendix: CRCL documents discussed in Report

1-Pager Summary: English & Spanish

For the full set of CRCL documents, please visit http://bit.ly/cpbclcrdox

Parents, children ensnared in 'zero-tolerance' border prosecutions | Local news | tucson.com

More on Border Control
http://tucson.com/news/local/parents-children-ensnared-in-zero-tolerance-border-prosecutions/article_e6b83d53-f4bd-566d-8487-9e9b67ef2bd8.amp.html#click=https://t.co/kUdogZ2B6L

http://www.newsweek.com/customs-and-border-control-beat-kicked-and-threatened-migrant-children-under-941385

Parents, children ensnared in 'zero-tolerance' border prosecutions

By Curt Prendergast and Perla Trevizo Arizona Daily Star

Updated 20 min ago

top story

A Mexican woman alters her pants at Casa Alitas after being released by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and fitted with an ankle monitoring bracelet. Perla Trevizo / Arizona Daily Star▲

An immigrant woman colors a heart with the Guatemalan flag to thank the staff at Casa Alitas, a shelter run by Catholic Community Services to help parents traveling with children. photos by Perla Trevizo / Arizona Daily Star ▲

A Guatemalan father who presented himself at the Nogales port of entry with his toddler daughter looks at a map at Casa Alitas, an initiative by Catholic Community Services, to see the distance between Arizona and California. Perla Trevizo / Arizona Daily Star ▲

Alma Jacinto covered her eyes with her hands as tears streamed down her cheeks.

The 36-year-old from Guatemala was led out of the federal courtroom without an answer to the question that brought her to tears: When would she see her boys again?

Jacinto wore a yellow bracelet on her left wrist, which defense lawyers said identifies parents who are arrested with their children and prosecuted in Operation Streamline, a fast-track program for illegal border crossers.

Moments earlier, her public defender asked the magistrate judge when Jacinto would be reunited with her sons, ages 8 and 11. There was no clear answer for Jacinto, who was sentenced to time served on an illegal-entry charge after crossing the border with her sons near Lukeville on May 14.

Parents who cross the border illegally with their children may face criminal charges as federal prosecutors in Tucson follow through on a recent directive from Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prosecute all valid cases, said U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Cosme Lopez.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection started referring families caught crossing illegally for prosecution several weeks ago, Lopez said. Those prosecutions unfold both in Streamline cases and through individual prosecutions.

On Thursday, Efrain Chun Carlos, also from Guatemala, received more information than Jacinto when he asked Magistrate Judge Lynnette C. Kimmins about his child during Streamline proceedings.

"I only wanted to ask about the whereabouts of my child in this country," Chun said.

Kimmins responded she didn't know where his child was and suggested he ask officials at the facility where he will be detained.

Christopher Lewis, the federal prosecutor at the hearing, told Kimmins that children from countries that are not contiguous to the United States will be placed in foster care with the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

"When they will be reunited, I cannot say because that's an immigration matter," Lewis said.

A spokesman for CBP did not provide information about the process for parents and children apprehended by Border Patrol and those presenting themselves at ports of entry.

It is still unclear what happens to the children of parents who are prosecuted, said Laura St. John, legal director with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project based in Arizona. Technically, once the child is separated from the parent they are deemed an unaccompanied minor and their cases should be processed separately.

If parents are deported, they can ask that their children go with them or ask that the child be reunited with another sponsor in the U.S., which gives the child a chance to fight an immigration case on his/her own as an unaccompanied child, consulate officials and attorneys said. If the parent decides to fight the case and is released from ICE custody, they can request to be reunited outside detention.

deterrent effect

Lopez said he did not know how many prosecutions of parents with children had occurred so far. The Arizona Daily Star found nine Streamline cases last week in which defendants asked the judge about their minor children.

The parents in those cases were arrested by Border Patrol agents near Lukeville between May 12 and May 15. Eight of them were from Guatemala and one was from El Salvador. Seven were men and two were women.

In an April 6 memorandum to federal prosecutors, Sessions announced a "zero tolerance" policy for first-time illegal border crossers. On May 7, he said the Department of Homeland Security was referring 100 percent of illegal crossers for criminal prosecution in federal court.

"If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you," Sessions said. "It's that simple."

He included parents who come with their children in his directive.

"If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child may be separated from you as required by law," he said.

Criminal prosecutions of parents illegally crossing with their children have unfolded in Texas for several months, as have separations of families through civil immigration measures along much of the U.S.-Mexico border, according to media reports.

Border Patrol statistics show fewer apprehensions of families in sectors in Texas so far in fiscal 2018, which began last October, compared with the same period in fiscal 2017. Meanwhile, those apprehensions rose 103 percent in the Yuma Sector and 69 percent in the Tucson Sector.

In an interview with National Public Radio, White House Chief of Staff John Kellly said family separation could be a tough deterrent, "a much faster turnaround on asylum seekers."

The children would be "put into foster care or whatever," Kelly said in response to criticism that taking a mother from her child is cruel and heartless.

"But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long," Kelly told NPR.

Border Patrol agents in the Tucson Sector apprehended 2,500 people crossing the border as families from October to the end of April, CBP records show. In the Yuma Sector, agents apprehended nearly 8,000. The borderwide total is nearly 50,000, down from 59,500 during the same period in fiscal 2017.

At Arizona's ports of entry, about 5,500 people traveling as families were deemed inadmissible from October to April. The borderwide total was 30,000, up from about 21,000 during the same period in fiscal 2017.

Casa Alitas helps some

The number of Salvadorans arriving at the border has increased about 40 percent compared to last year, said German Alvarez Oviedo, the consul in Tucson. He estimated the total is still in the dozens but didn't have final numbers yet.

"There's no policy of family separation as such," he said, "but by declaring a zero-tolerance policy and prosecuting everyone who comes in, it results in family separation."

If the parent gets sentenced to time served, which is common for first-time entrants, officials should consider keeping young children with their parents, he said.

"It's not the same to be under the care of the mother than a shelter, especially when the child is 2," Alvarez Oviedo said.

The government has struggled to handle the increase of families coming across the border — at ports of entry and between the ports — since the numbers first started to rise in 2014.

Initially, officials allowed parents with children to enter the country under humanitarian parole. They were dropped off at a bus station in Tucson with an appointment to meet with ICE at their final destination within two weeks.

Later, officials started to release them, but with an ankle bracelet to limit what critics called a catch-and-release policy, since not all parents kept their appointments. The government also increased detention space for families.

This past week, more than 100 parents and children — many of them Guatemalans — lined up at the port of entry in downtown Nogales to be processed for entry into the United States, some waiting more than a day.

In general, the parents waiting to cross at the port who have no prior immigration history are processed and released with their children in Tucson with an ankle monitor and an appointment to meet with immigration officials. In at least one case, the families said, a man with prior immigration violations was separated from his son to be prosecuted.

Some of the families the Star spoke with Monday on the Mexican side of the port of entry went to Casa Alitas, a house in Tucson opened by Catholic Community Services to avoid having families spend the night at bus stations. Families can bathe, get clean clothes and eat a warm meal while their relatives buy their bus or plane tickets.

In a written statement, ICE officials said the agency prioritizes placing families in residential centers. But if they are operating at capacity, "We can also look for temporary hotel space or consider alternatives to detention, such as supervised paroles or use of ankle placement for monitoring."

The families said customs officials at the Nogales port of entry didn't ask them many questions, besides their reasons for coming to the United States.

Extortion, domestic violence and extreme poverty were all reasons they were seeking a better future in the United States, they told the Star.

The lack of rain also was hurting their ability to survive. For coffee farmers, their fields weren't producing enough and their crops were more susceptible to plagues they had no money to treat.

Katherine Smith, site and volunteer coordinator at Casa Alitas, said few families came last fall. Then it started to pick up around Christmas, with ICE trying to find placement for 100 people in one day.

It had slowed again until recently, when ICE started to ask Casa Alitas daily if it could take 40 to 60 parents and children the agency was releasing, Smith said.

Smith doesn't know the reason for the increase, other than the normal rise in Southern Arizona right before the triple-digit heat of summer.

As of May 7, the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project had served 135 families separated by immigration authorities this year. At this rate, the group said, family separations are on pace to increase 75 percent from recent years.

Given recent announcements by federal officials, they believe the numbers will continue to rise, although it doesn't mean that all of them were prosecuted, the group said.

"A number of these families appear to have a real fear of returning to their country of origin," said St. John, the Florence Project's legal director. "Fleeing or leaving a child behind to avoid being separated by the U.S. government is not a choice any parent should have to make."

Contact reporter Curt Prendergast at 573-4224 or cprendergast@tucson.com. Twitter: @CurtTucsonStar. Contact reporter Perla Trevizo at 573-4102 or ptrevizo@tucson.com. Twitter: @Perla_Trevizo.

North Korea Says Trump Wasn’t ‘Confident’ Enough to Meet Kim Jong Un

North Korea Says Trump Wasn't 'Confident' Enough to Meet Kim Jong Un

Art of the fail

http://www.newsweek.com/north-korea-says-trump-wasnt-confident-enough-meet-kim-jong-un-944087

North Korea Says Trump Wasn't 'Confident' Enough to Meet Kim Jong Un

By Sofia Lotto Persio On 5/25/18 at 5:35 AM

North Korea claimed to be surprised and "full of regret" at President Donald Trump's decision to cancel the planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore.

The North Korean regime rejected responsibility for the summit cancellation in a statement released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Thursday and attributed to Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, translated and quoted in 38 North, a web journal that provides analysis and insight into North Korea.

The vice foreign minister expressed "great regret" for Trump's "sudden and unilateral" announcement, for which, he said, it was "hard to guess" the reasons. "It could be that he lacked the will for the summit or he might not have felt confident," Kim Kye Gwam suggested, poking at president's ego.

In the letter to Kim Jong Un, Trump said he thought the atmosphere was too hostile for the two of them to meet, a reference to a recent statement from North Korea's vice-foreign minister Choe Son Hui in which she called Vice-President Mike Pence "a political dummy" for comparing her country to Libya.

Humanitarian Crisis Unfolding Under Trump’s Border Control Policies — It’s happening here;,It’s happening now

It's happening here. It's happening now. Under Trump's New Policy on Border Control, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered that children and parents be separated and placed into detention centers or foster care when seeking asylum or refuge in the United States of America.

They are being forced to wear yellow bracelets reminiscent of the Yellow Stars of David Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany.

Of the 9,000 children in their custody, 1475 children were lost and that's just in Arizona.

Apparently some were sold into human trafficking. This is beyond reprehensible. ICE must be contained.

Trump recently authorized the destruction of evidence and they are shredding documents to cover up rampant sexual and verbal abuse and deaths of detainees abused by ICE and Border Control Agents.

Jeff Sessions and Trump authorized the destruction of records detailing the abuse and evidence of crimes by ICE and Border Control Agents detailing brutality and violence against women and children in their custody.

This is a humanitarian crisis of global proportions and requires a global response.

Please help us. America has lost it's way.

-Elyssa Durant

Border Patrol Kicked, Punched Migrant Children, Threatened Some with Sexual Abuse, ACLU Alleges
World
Central American migrants travelling in the 'Migrant Via Crucis' caravan sleep outside 'El Chaparral' port of entry to US while waiting to be received by US authorities, in Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico on April 30, 2018. The ACLU released a new report detailing abuse allegations minors have made against CBP officers. Photo: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images
Watch video!
Migrant children under the care of United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were allegedly beaten, threatened with sexual violence and repeatedly assaulted while in custody between 2009 and 2014, according to a report released Wednesday from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School.
Based on 30,000 pages of documents obtained through a records request, the report includes gruesome, detailed accusations of physical and mental abuse at the hands of officers. The claims were filed by unaccompanied minors, most of whom hailed from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Honduras. CBP officials have contested large swaths of the report, telling Newsweek that many of the allegations have been investigated and are "false."
Border authorities were accused of kicking a child in the ribs and forcing a 16-year-old girl to "spread her legs" for an aggressive body search. Other children accused officers of punching a child in the head three times, running over a 17-year-old boy and denying medical care to a pregnant teen, who later had a stillbirth.
Mitra Ebadolahi, ACLU Border Litigation Project staff attorney, said the allegations describe a law enforcement system "marked by brutality and lawlessness." The organization also accused Border Protection officials of failing to "meaningfully investigate" the allegations detailed in the public records.
"All human beings deserve to be treated with dignity and respect regardless of their immigration status—and children, in particular, deserve special protection," she said. "The misconduct demonstrated in these records is breathtaking, as is the government's complete failure to hold officials who abuse their power accountable."
In a call with reporters on Wednesday, ACLU staff and researchers from the International Human Rights Clinic said that the allegations, which took place during the presidency of Barack Obama, are especially alarming now that President Donald Trump has vowed to beef up the detentions of undocumented immigrants.
"The fact that these children were already so vulnerable—most traveling alone in hopes of escaping violence and poverty in their home countries—made the unlawful and inhumane actions reflected in the documents even more distressing," Claudia Flores, faculty director of the International Human Rights Clinic at University of Chicago, said in a statement to Newsweek.
Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now

In response to the allegations, Dan Hetlage, a spokesperson for the Border Control department, accused the ACLU of presenting accusations against CBP officers as fact. The department also accused the ACLU of deliberately littering the report with vague anecdotes. Without specifics, Border Protection cannot take "reasonable steps" to examine or address the accusations, Hetlage said.
"The false accusations made by the ACLU against the previous administration are unfounded and baseless," Hetlage said. "The 'report' equates allegations with fact, flatly ignores a number of improvements made by CBP as well as oversight conducted by outside, independent agencies, including the DHS Office of Inspector General and the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties over the last decade."
Katie Waldman, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, echoed Hetlage's concerns, telling Newsweek the report is "absurd."
"They are without merit," she said. "Packaging dozens of patently baseless allegations and calling it a 'report' does not change the facts—it is just a collection of patently baseless allegations."
This story has been updated to include a comment from the Department of Homeland Security.

Via Newsweek Available:

http://www.newsweek.com/customs-and-border-control-beat-kicked-and-threatened-migrant-children-under-941385?amp=1#click=https://t.co/gNkNQsvjsv