Children are often left with no choice but to work – whether to pay off their debts to sponsors, or try to provide for their families back home. Many sponsors use this as an opportunity to profit off of migrant children – charging them for rent, food, clothing, and fees to file their immigration paperwork. In Texas, a case worker said she “had encountered a man who had been targeting poor families in Guatemala, promising to help them get rich if they sent their children across the border. Overall, the agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children.” checks on all minors by calling them a month after they begin living with their sponsors, data obtained by The Times showed that over the last two years, the agency could not reach more than 85,000 children. Resource: Image obtained from New York Times, Electronic Publication of February 25, 2023. Court information has been redacted for privacy. The child owed more than $4,000, plus interest. From there, there is no formal follow-up from any federal or local agencies to ensure the children are safe and cared for.Ī handwritten ledger, in Spanish, of one childs debts to his sponsor, including money for tacos and clothes. Tens of thousands of migrant children are released into the care of sponsors with nothing but a phone number for a national hotline. Unlike the foster system where all children are assigned case workers for the duration of their time in foster care, just one third of migrant children have case managers through the Department of Health and Human Services, and those that do have case managers have them for just 4 months. Many agencies began skipping over certain protections in order to place children in the care of sponsors more quickly, including skipping background checks and reviews of files. The Biden Administration put pressure on the shelter system to move children out of these facilities quickly and into the care of sponsors. began housing children in jail-like facilities run by the Customs and Border Protection, and later, in tent cities. However, the increase in unaccompanied children led to the shelters becoming overcrowded and H.H.S. While awaiting release into the care of a sponsor, migrant children stay in shelters. Sponsors are supposed to be vetted by the Department of Health and Human Services, but the vetting process has many gaps that can put children into unsafe and exploitative situations. The vast majority are being released into the care of distant relatives they have never met, or in many cases, complete strangers. Just 30% of children’s sponsors are their parents. began a program to allow non-Mexican minors to live with sponsors while they go through the lengthy process of immigration proceedings. Unaccompanied children have been crossing the Southern border for decades. in search of a better life, fleeing poverty, political unrest, and unsafe situations. Credit: Kirsten Luce for The New York Times. In the past two years alone, 250,000 unaccompanied minors have come into the country.
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