Fusion
By Nidki Prakash
January 28, 2016
Reports
emerged earlier this week of children from Central America, many of
them refugees, being sent by government agencies to private homes where
they face abusive conditions,
including sexual abuse and human trafficking. Today, a Senate
subcommittee will examine those claims, and the process that’s used to
move immigrant children from public shelters to private homes.
In
an investigative report released Monday, The Associated Press found
that since April 2014, the department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
gradually phased out identity
and criminal history checks before sending Central American children to
live in private homes:
Since
the rule changes, the AP has identified more than two dozen children
who were placed with sponsors who subjected them to sexual abuse, labor
trafficking or severe
abuse and neglect.
“This
is clearly the tip of the iceberg,” said Jacqueline Bhabha, research
director at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard
University. “We would never
release domestic children to private settings with as little scrutiny.”
A
spokesperson for the agency said that the background checks and
fingerprinting have since been re-instated. “We are committed to
placement of unaccompanied children
with appropriate sponsors that serve the best interest of the child,”
Bob Carey, the director of the Office for Refugee Resettlement (part of
HHS), said in a statement.
More
than 125,000 Central American children and teenagers were stopped at
the U.S.-Mexico border since 2011, according to the Washington Post,
with some being sent to
shelters. “We have a large percentage of these kids that disappear, and
I don’t know what happens to them,” Jessica Ramos, a lawyer with
Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, told the newspaper.
The
Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations conducted its own
research in the past six months, finding “more than 30 cases involving
serious indications of trafficking
and abuse,” said Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican senator from Ohio.
The
plight of Central American refugees has been highlighted in recent
weeks by a backlash against what advocates say are unnecessarily
punitive Immigration and Customs
Enforcement home raids targeting Central American women and children
who have fled violent circumstances in their home countries.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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