In response to an influx of young migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is opening large-scale facilities in convention centers and stadiums in Dallas, San Diego, San Antonio, and most recently, Long Beach.
Despite ongoing media attention, the public knows frustratingly little about the profound health and social consequences of this detention.
“A nightmare I can’t escape.”
I have interviewed nearly 200 children within ORR facilities for my research. Young people experience these facilities as “lost time,” “traumatic” and “a nightmare I can’t escape.” They are places where “I am treated like a criminal … a threat” and where “I have no rights.”
Children describe constant surveillance, limited communication with family, lack of fresh air and green space, and, most disturbingly, overmedication.
From 12-bed group homes to 500-bed institutions, unaccompanied children struggle to cope with the uncertainty of family reunification, ongoing legal proceedings, and the possibility of deportation.
Given limited federal oversight and high staff turnover, abuse within ORR facilities is also well-documented. As 15-year-old Lisette from Guatemala explained to me, “This is not care. It’s detention.”
Children aren’t the only ones reaching these conclusions.
Decades of research underscores that care in large-scale institutions can cause severe harm especially to young children. The American Academy of Pediatrics identifies that detention results in high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. These symptoms do not disappear upon release. Even brief detention, experts concur, can cause psychological trauma and induce long-term mental health risks.
The federal government has codified that children in domestic children should be placed in the least restrictive setting appropriate to their needs, prioritizing family and small group care. Yet, federal facilities for immigrant children continue to grow in size.
It’s no wonder that these facilities are bypassing state child welfare licensing or abiding by the Flores Settlement Agreement, a longstanding pact that requires federal facilities to meet basic standards for the treatment of immigrant children.
Reunification amid pervasive distrust.
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia has promised that the federal government will work quickly and diligently to reunify children with family members or sponsors. Here, too, we might learn from other experts: family reunification specialists who describe an often-lengthy sponsorship process. Phone numbers tucked in socks or sewn into clothing get lost en route. Children may be separated from family during the journey or upon apprehension by Border Patrol, never knowing their final destination. If identified, sponsors (including undocumented parents) must come forward with a series of documents, disclose where and with whom they live, and provide fingerprints to the FBI.
With adequate infrastructure and trained staff — resources not in place in these impromptu facilities — fast-tracked reunification with a bare minimum of safeguards takes 47 days on average. Family reunification specialists describe contending with considerable distrust of potential sponsors not only because the Trump administration enlisted the reunification process as “bait” to detain undocumented parents, but also because President Biden alongside Obama deported a record 5.3 million immigrants. As a result, families are reluctant to come forward. Meanwhile, children remain detained.
The San Diego Convention Center evidences these challenges—only one of the 1367 detained children has been reunified in the two and a half weeks since opening.
Instead, Mayor Garcia and the Long Beach City Council must ask critical questions, defer to child welfare experts, and importantly, listen to children.
So too, city leadership should question how the Biden Administration’s policies are producing this latest influx by preserving the use of Title 42 — a Trump-era policy that instructs Border Patrol to refuse entry to all new asylum-seeking adults. As families are turned away under Title 42, many parents make the difficult choice of sending their children to cross into the U.S. alone, rather than remain in Mexico under dangerous conditions.
In effect, the Biden administration is rendering children unaccompanied, while reopening the very “baby jails” that drew public ire under Trump.
Whether under Republican or Democratic leadership, migrant children continue to experience more of the same — family separation and detention. Although it is politically uncomfortable, Mayor Garcia and the Long Beach City Council must act in the best interests of children.
Lauren Heidbrink is an associate professor of human development at California State University, Long Beach and author of “Migranthood: Youth in a New Era of Deportation.”
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