FEATURE: US asylum camps over crowded and uninhabitable for children

President Joe Biden has opened the border to unaccompanied children seeking asylum, relaxing former President Donald Trump’s policy of turning migrants away due to Covid-19.

PRETORIA, May 28 (ANA) – More than 36, 000 unaccompanied children have crossed into the United States (US) between March and April without parents and have found themselves trapped in asylum camps, with officials giving little consideration to their vulnerabilities and needs as children, the BBC reports.

According to the British broadcaster, the US has a vast system of detention sites scattered across the country, holding more than 20,000 migrant children.

The BBC says it has uncovered allegations of cold temperatures, sickness, neglect, lice and filth, through a series of interviews with children and staff.

After taking office in January, US President Joe Biden has opened the borders to unaccompanied children seeking asylum, overthrowing former President Donald Trump’s policy of turning migrants away due to Covid-19.

Biden has since been criticised over the rise in border arrivals.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), violence and rampant poverty, worsened by the pandemic and devastating hurricanes, have driven young people from Central America, with Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans to find themselves alone in the US.

Most others come from Mexico, where the homicide rate is at high levels amid a long-standing war against drug cartels.

Many children hope to reunite with relatives in the US, others have deliberately left their families behind and some migrant parents send their children across the border alone to avail themselves of asylum protection for unaccompanied minors.

A 2015 report from the US Commission on Civil Rights stated that migrant detainees were subject to torture-like conditions.

Meanwhile the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said children in asylum camps are exposed to conditions that are often degrading and inhumane.

“They may be denied access to adequate medical services and education, abused and mistreated by police, guards, and other detainees, and unable to seek asylum,” read the report.

According to America Magazine, numerous humanitarian organisations have long exposed the abuse and endangerment of immigrants in U.S. custody. Watchdog groups and investigative journalists alike have documented sexual abuse and medical neglect of children in detention.

The publication added that a legal expert on immigration law and policy, Maunica Sthank, gave a damning indictment in the Rutgers University Law Review back in 2013.

“The US immigration detention system, the largest law enforcement operation in the country, operates with structural impunity resulting in the perpetual abuse of the detained population. There are no enforceable regulations and no accountability mechanisms to protect detainees,” she was quoted as saying.

The BBC tracked down the children who have been released, to find out about conditions in US detention sites.

Ten-year-old Ariany, who crossed into the US alone, spent 22 days in detention. She was crammed into a plastic cubicle with scores of other children, from toddlers to teens, wrapped in a silver emergency blanket.

“We were very cold, we had nowhere to sleep so we shared mats. We were five girls on two mats.”

Ariany was finally reunited with her mother, Sonia, in late March, wrote the BBC.

Cindy, 16, who was also in the same camp as Ariany, told the broadcaster that there were 80 girls in her cubicle and that she and most of the children were wet under their blankets, due to dripping pipes.

“We all woke up wet, we slept on our sides, all hugged, so we stayed warm.”

Paola, a 16-year-old told the BBC that they were given food that had expired, or was rotten or not cooked properly which made many children sick.

The broadcaster explained that some girls were able to shower once a week, but others said they did not shower for several weeks at a time.

“I started to feel my head itching, and I realised that it was not normal. They checked my head and told me that I had lice,’’ Paola was quoted as saying.

To combat the issue of unaccompanied minors, CFR said President Biden created a task force to reunite the hundreds of still-separated children with their parents.

Officials have also begun reinstating the Central American Minors (CAM) program, which allows certain children from Northern Triangle countries to gain refugee status or temporary legal residence before making the dangerous journey to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump discontinued CAM in 2017.

With all the efforts from the Biden administration, CFR said the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) has been overwhelmed with the influx of unaccompanied children

The administration has responded by deploying the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help care for unaccompanied children and opening new emergency shelters, among other efforts.

Meanwhile, officials have sought to speed up releases of unaccompanied children to sponsors. Still, the number of children entering Health and Human Services (HHS) custody far outpaces the number being released from its care.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Naomi Mackay