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ROUNDTABLE REPORT JULY

2015

enforcement create a poor climate for reform and may actually

erode child protections previously secured.

In 2014, against the backdrop of the increase in the numbers

of unaccompanied children entering the United States, LIRS

brought together over 40 national and local experts in a

series of three full-day Roundtable meetings in Washington,

DC to consider these fundamental questions regarding

unaccompanied children:

1. Exploration: What is current practice? The ﬁrst

Roundtable assessed existing policies and services,

including ideal service models, current challenges, and

promising practices. (March 18, 2014)

2. Convergence: What should current practice be? The

second Roundtable identiﬁed potential solutions to

current challenges and methods for achieving desired

change. (May 29, 2014)

3. Action: How do we achieve ideal practice? The ﬁnal

Roundtable prioritized key policy and practice

improvements and developed a shared vision for

accomplishing change, both as a group and as individual

organizations. The intense media attention, heated

Congressional hearings, and variety of proposed and actual

policy changes in response to what the U.S. government

deemed a “humanitarian crisis” created a tangible urgency

for the collective deliberations. (July 16, 2014)

The practice expertise of these inter-disciplinary professionals

provided the foundational background for LIRS as we drafted

this report and developed the concrete recommendations for

a coherent protective approach to unaccompanied children,

consistent with current child welfare and refugee protection

principles. All Roundtable participants had a role to play in

the formulation of the overarching principles; however, the

recommendations were developed by LIRS and do not necessarily

have the endorsement of the participants.

The recommendations of this report are also drawn from the

following important resources:

• Child welfare principles from nationally recognized sources:

o The Child Welfare Information Gateway of the

Children’s Bureau (Administration for Children and

Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human

Services): www.childwelfare.gov

o The Child Welfare League of America’s National

Blueprint for Excellence in Child Welfare (2013): http://

www.cwla.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/

BlueprintExecutiveSummary1.pdf

• United States law and legal precedent:

o United States laws and court decisions relevant to

unaccompanied children: http://www.ecfr.gov

• International treaties and guidance:

o The Convention on the Rights of the Child

o The 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to

the Status of Refugees

o Guidance on unaccompanied children from the

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

(UNHCR): www.refworld.org

The report is structured in four parts. We begin with a brief

overview of the legal and policy framework, followed by a

discussion of the current context, practices, and challenges.

Then, we present a set of principles developed out of the LIRS

Children’s Roundtable process, which we believe should guide

policy and practice with unaccompanied minors. Finally, the

report concludes with recommendations to the U.S. federal

government agencies and entities that have responsibility for

the care and treatment of unaccompanied children.

LEGAL AND POLICY FRAMEWORK

The distinctive needs of unaccompanied children have been

recognized in a number of important international legal

instruments. The drafting conference for the 1951 Convention

Relating to the Status of Refugees, in which the United States

participated, unanimously adopted a recommendation for

governments to protect, “…refugees who are minors, in particular

unaccompanied children and girls…”.

The Convention on the

Rights of the Child also speciﬁcally mentions The United States’

responsibilities to provide protection and assistance to refuge-

seeking children, whether unaccompanied or accompanied.

In keeping with these international treaties, the United Nations

Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has produced numerous resources

and reports detailing the special needs of unaccompanied and

separated children,

and the U.S. government has developed

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ROUNDTABLE REPORT JULY

2015

systems of specialized care for unaccompanied children who

come to the United States as planned arrivals (e.g., through the

U.S. refugee resettlement program)

and as unplanned arrivals

(e.g., those encountered by immigration authorities, particularly

along the southern U.S. border).

National and international

organizations have developed specialized identiﬁcation and

caregiving procedures to protect unaccompanied children from the

abuse, neglect, and exploitation to which they are susceptible.

A variety of U.S. laws and legal decisions provide the legal

framework and authority from which current policies and

programs towards unaccompanied children have developed.

Described below are some of the most signiﬁcant pillars of

the legal guidance. Further detail is provided in Appendix J.

Refugee Act of 1980

With passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, Congress approved

the ﬁrst major overhaul of U.S. refugee resettlement policy since

1952. This legislation brought the United States into conformity

with its treaty obligations as a signatory to the United Nations

1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status

of Refugees,

implemented an asylum process for those

needing protection after arrival to the United States, and

removed anachronistic language so that refugee protection

was available beyond merely those ﬂeeing communism or

the Middle East.

Furthermore, this legislation afﬁrmed the

principle of non-refoulement (forbids the return of a victim to his

or her prosecutor) and the U.S. responsibility to not return to

danger those whose life or freedom is threatened.

The Refugee Act of 1980 also included special provisions for

providing care and supervision of unaccompanied refugee

children, leading to the development of a network of specialized

refugee foster care programs for unaccompanied refugee minors

resettled in the U.S.

Thus, the Refugee Act of 1980 demonstrates

the United States’ historical recognition of the vulnerabilities of

unaccompanied children needing protection and our nation’s

commitment to providing appropriate protection and care.

❖Flores Settlement Agreement

In 1997, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of

California approved the Flores Settlement Agreement in

response to a lawsuit brought by various organizations against

the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, and by

extension the U.S. Attorney General. The Flores Settlement

Agreement required the U.S. government to observe certain

due process, including custody and release provisions with

respect to children in federal custody for immigration reasons.

Speciﬁcally, the agreement stipulates that the federal government

must provide safe and sanitary care for children consistent

with children’s vulnerabilities and ensure their safety and

well-being. While children are in federal custody, government-

funded programs for unaccompanied children are required to

provide services such as food and shelter, health and mental

health care, basic education, recreation, access to religious

services, case management, and family reuniﬁcation services.

Furthermore, the Flores Settlement Agreement requires that

children be placed in the least restrictive setting, in accordance

with child welfare principles, and it established a preference for

reuniﬁcation with family members over continued government

detention. A little more than ten years after the Flores Settlement

Agreement, many of the standards from this agreement were

eventually incorporated into the Trafﬁcking Victims Protection

Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA).

❖Homeland Security Act of 2002

Following years of advocacy, investigative reporting, and

litigation,

the system for dealing with unaccompanied children

who enter the United States without immigration documents

changed signiﬁcantly in 2002 with passage of the Homeland

Security Act (HSA), which transferred unaccompanied children’s

care and custody responsibilities from the former Immigration

and Naturalization Service (INS) to the existing Ofﬁce of Refugee

Resettlement (ORR), within the U.S. Department of Health

and Human Services where ORR also had the responsibility of

resettling unaccompanied refugee minors (URM). Under the

former-INS, perennial problems included the lengthy detention

of children (for months to even years) with no placement review

process, lack of trauma-informed care, the use of jail-like detention

facilities, physical restraints such as shackles, commingling with

juvenile offenders for children who had not committed crimes,

arbitrary decision making, and an intrinsic conﬂict of interest

in being simultaneously responsible for both removal and

caretaking in relation to children. Fundamentally, the structural

change made by the HSA moved decision-making power from a

government agency focused primarily on law enforcement, to a

government agency focused primarily on human service needs

and with expertise in migration and child welfare matters. The

long-term implications of this change should not be overlooked,

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ROUNDTABLE REPORT JULY

2015

as it represents a tangible recognition of the U.S. government’s

responsibility to treat unaccompanied minors as children ﬁrst

and foremost.

❖The William Wilberforce Trafﬁcking Victims Protection

Reauthorization Act of 2008

In December 2008, then-President George W. Bush signed

into law the Trafﬁcking Victims Protection Reauthorization

Act (TVPRA), initially passed in 2000 and reauthorized in

2003, 2005, 2008, and 2013. The TVPRA of 2008 recognized

the inherent trafﬁcking risks and unique vulnerabilities

of children outside the care of a parent or guardian and

implemented greater protection measures for unaccompanied

children. The TVPRA took important steps to improve the

protection of children by building on existing U.S. procedures

and handling children’s cases in a more sensitive manner.

Children seeking asylum protection can now be initially

interviewed in an ofﬁce setting by U.S. asylum ofﬁcers trained

to hear children’s claims, rather than having their asylum

cases handled and cross-examined in the more intimidating

and formal immigration court process. Recognizing a child’s

inability to navigate U.S. immigration procedures alone,

the TVPRA expanded children’s access to pro bono counsel.

Finally, the TVPRA codiﬁed the existing federal practice of

ensuring child welfare protections were incorporated into the

custody of unaccompanied immigrant children. This included

procedural protections to intercept trafﬁcking and guarantee

a child’s right to a hearing before a judge. This practice

safeguards due process for non-Mexican children, rather than

perpetuating a migratory “revolving door” that can enable the

trafﬁcking of children. Concerns with the implementation

of the TVPRA—and the current threat that the law may be

rescinded or modiﬁed to the detriment of child protection—are

explored in the following sections.

CURRENT CONTEXT, PRACTICES,

AND CHALLENGES

A majority of the unaccompanied children coming to

the United States report having ﬂed violence, abuse and

deprivation in Central America. Although the reasons for

migration are complex, a signiﬁcant factor in the countries

of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala is the endemic

violence from gangs and other armed criminal actors. In

Honduras, homicide levels surpass that in the worst war

zones of South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of

the Congo.

A United Nations study of global homicide

identiﬁed Honduras as the most violent country in the

world,

and U.S. Borders and Custom Protection (CBP)

data indicated San Pedro Sula (Honduras’ second largest

city) as the most common city of origin for unaccompanied

children.

21, 22

El Salvador and Guatemala ranked fourth and

ﬁfth in global homicide rates.

In 2014, the United Nations High Commissioner for

Refugees (UNHCR) issued a report—Children on the Run—

based on more than 400 interviews with unaccompanied

children from Central America and Mexico. The report

found that 58% of the children UNHCR interviewed in

ORR and Customs and Border Protection custody disclosed

reasons for their ﬂight warranting international protection,

including harm from organized armed criminal actors and

violence in the home.

Since 2008 other countries in the

region—such as Belize, Costa Rica, Mexico, Nicaragua, and

Panama—have noted a 712% increase in asylum applications

from Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans.

Beyond

these reasons for ﬂight, unaccompanied children are

vulnerable to particular risks during migration, including

trafﬁcking, sexual assault, physical deprivation, violence,

trauma, exploitation by criminals, kidnap and ransom, etc.

A rise in the numbers of unaccompanied children coming to the

United States has been documented over the past several years,

and advocates and service providers have been calling attention

to the increasing child protection issues in a number of reports.

From 2003 through 2011, the number of unaccompanied

children in ORR custody was between 6,000 and 8,000 a year.

These numbers began to noticeably rise at the end of FY 2011,

with nearly 14,000 children placed in ORR custody in FY 2012,

nearly 25,000 in FY 2013, and over 57,000 unaccompanied

children in ORR care in FY 2014.

It is worth noting that

ORR receives into its care only a subset of the total number of

unaccompanied children picked up at the border, since about

95% of Mexican unaccompanied minors are returned to Mexico

within 72 hours.

In 2014 the total number of unaccompanied

children who were apprehended by CBP was over 68,500.

Within the growing population of unaccompanied children

coming to the United States, the proportion of girls and younger

children has increased. The Pew Research Center found that the

apprehension of children ages 12 and under had increased by

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ROUNDTABLE REPORT JULY

2015

117% between FY 2013 and the ﬁrst eight months of FY 2014,

while the number of girls increased by 77% during that same

period, with the largest increases across both categories coming

from Honduran children.

This shifting demographic strongly

suggests that current migration is being motivated by fear rather

than economic opportunity. In a related development, there

has also been a dramatic increase in the migration of families

with young children to the United States, with high percentages

expressing a fear of return.

In the following sections, we describe policy and practice

in the care and custody of unaccompanied children in

the United States. We also describe the challenges posed

by the current system. This current system overview was

heavily informed by the input of the participants in the three

Roundtables that LIRS organized in 2014.

A System in Crisis

Current practice. An array of federal agencies, spread

across different federal departments, touch the lives of

unaccompanied children in varying ways, including the

U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Department

for Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department

of Justice. This system for responding to unaccompanied

minors has been in constant ﬂux for over a decade, and the

operational infrastructure has never completely caught up

with the changes that have been mandated. Even before

the steep rise in numbers in the summer of 2014, which

overwhelmed existing resources and capacity, the system has

been subject to repeated shifts in policy and procedure whose

full consequences are not well anticipated, and that are not

always clearly developed as guidance to the ﬁeld, leaving a

patchwork of differing interpretations and approaches.

Challenges. A strong child welfare system ideally has an

intentional approach to balancing the various interests at

stake and operates in a predictable manner. When all of the

players in the system are buffeted with changing directives,

some of which undermine other aspects of the established

framework, children fall through the cracks.

Apprehension and Custody of Unaccompanied Children

Current Practice. In almost all instances, the initial government

encounter with unaccompanied children occurs at the point of

apprehension—by Customs and Border Protection’s U.S. Border

Patrol (USBP) near the southern U.S. border, or less often by

Customs and Border Protection’s Ofﬁce of Field Operations (OFO)

at ofﬁcial ports of entry. In 2014, over 70% of the unaccompanied

children who were identiﬁed as having entered the United

States without proper documents, or who came through ofﬁcial

inspection sites, were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol in

the South Texas Rio Grande Sector.

Upon apprehension, agents

take children to short-term holding facilities with conditions that

range from enclosed cells with cinderblock benches and open

toilets, to portable modular units or outdoor cages. Under the

terms of the Flores Settlement Agreement, children from non-

contiguous countries must be transferred to the custody of ORR

as quickly as possible, and within no more than 72 hours. During

the summer of 2014 when the number of refugee children from

Central America was at an all-time high, ORR did not have the

bed space to place children. As a result, some children remained

in over-crowded CBP stations for weeks at a time. To mitigate the

situation at the over-crowded CBP stations in McAllen and Nogales,

Texas, CBP opened three large warehouse-style processing

centers (“Service Processing Centers”) at Lackland Air Force

Base (TX), Naval Base Ventura County (CA), and Fort Sill (OK).

Challenges. U.S. Border Patrol holding facilities and other

holding facilities or processing centers are neither designed

for nor appropriate for children. Both children and adults refer

to the temporary holding facilities as “hieleras” (Spanish for

“freezers”) due to their cold temperature.

Immense Service

Processing Centers are neither designed for nor appropriate

The first kilometers of this route force migrants to cross sections on foot.

To avoid roads they venture into areas of dense vegetation. La Arrocera

is one of these spots and is famous among migratory routes for being

scenery of continuous assault and rape perpetrated by native groups.

Photo credit: Ruido.

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ROUNDTABLE REPORT JULY

2015

for the care of children and conﬂict with basic child welfare

standards of placing children in the least restrictive and most

family-like setting appropriate to their needs.

In June 2014, a coalition of six legal advocacy organizations

ﬁled a formal complaint against CBP with the DHS Ofﬁce for

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, as well as the DHS Ofﬁce of

Inspector General, on behalf of 116 unaccompanied children

between the ages of 5 and 17.

The complaint alleges abuse

and mistreatment against these children while in CBP custody,

including physical abuse, sexual assault, beatings, use of

stress positions, verbal abuse, denial of food and medical care,

unsanitary conditions, shackling, and custody beyond the 72

hour maximum stipulated under the TVPRA.

In addition to enduring poor conditions and treatment,

children in CBP custody do not have lawyers or Child

Advocates and have limited assistance, knowledge, or even

phone access to try and secure such help. This means that

unaccompanied children in CBP custody are almost always

interrogated alone by law enforcement ofﬁcials lacking

child welfare interviewing expertise, whether CBP agents

or other federal law enforcement agents, without any legal

representation or legal guardian present. This practice is

counter to good practice in child welfare and basic due process

with vulnerable populations.

Lack of Protections for Unaccompanied Children from

Contiguous Countries (i.e. Mexico & Canada)

Current Practice. Children from contiguous countries (Mexico

and Canada) have separate processing procedures under the

TVPRA that result in rapid return for most. The procedures

require DHS to make a determination that these unaccompanied

children are neither trafﬁcking victims nor children with a fear of

return, and that they are able to make an independent decision to

withdraw their application of admission.

In practice, this policy

applies overwhelmingly to Mexican children. These regulations

also stipulate that unaccompanied children should be returned

to child welfare authorities during normal business hours (so

that children are not returned without support in the middle of

the night, raising serious safety issues), and without a lasting

charge on the child’s U.S. immigration record.

Under the TVPRA, DHS (in practice CBP) must make these

determinations within 48 hours. If CBP is not able to do so

in a timely manner, then children from contiguous countries

must be transferred to the custody of the ORR, just as

children from non-contiguous countries.

Challenges. The TVPRA-mandated special screening of children

from non-contiguous countries was implemented to ensure that

children (almost always Mexican) receive protections required

under the U.S. Refugee Act

and to ensure that children are not

returned to trafﬁcking situations. However, the implementation

of this screening is largely perfunctory and does not accomplish

its protective intent.

This results in CBP routinely returning

unaccompanied Mexican children—many of whom face severe

risks from violent criminal actors or trafﬁckers—without a

thorough examination of children’s protection needs. Mexican

unaccompanied children are routinely asked to make complex

immigration decisions all on their own, without a lawyer or Child

Advocate present. A child, by virtue of his or her very status as a

child, lacks the necessary capacity to consent to a withdrawal of

an application of admission without a legal guardian, lawyer, or

Child Advocate assisting him or her in the process.

The current U.S. system for processing Mexican unaccompanied

children has, for all intents and purposes, created a two-tiered

system of processing for these children: Mexican children

are rarely given access to protective and due process legal

procedures, while Central American and other children have

access to protective measures as a matter of standard practice.

Over the past decade, the U.S. screening and adjudication process

for Central American children has become increasingly child-

sensitive; however, Mexican children are virtually excluded from

these approaches and instead face fast-track return procedures.

As a result, Central American children make up 93% of children

in ORR custody, and Mexican unaccompanied children make up

only 3%, a ratio that is not reﬂective of the protection need.

Custody, Transport, and Return of Unaccompanied Children

Current Practice. Practices for the transport of children are

evolving and differ depending on where children are being taken.

Until this past summer, agents from Immigration and Customs

Enforcement (ICE) have had the responsibility for physically

transporting children to ORR facilities that are located far from

the border. This responsibility has rested with ICE’s Juvenile and

Family Residential Management Unit (JFRMU). On the other

hand, if the destination ORR facility is located near the border, it is

CBP ofﬁcers who transport children. Typically both ICE and CBP

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ROUNDTABLE REPORT JULY

2015

agents are armed and in uniform. Children may be transported

in federal vehicles or in vehicles contracted from private transport

companies such as G4 and Trailboss.

As part of this transportation function, ICE at times places

children in special short-term facilities during transit stopovers.

Some of these are contracted by ICE for the purpose of holding a

child in transport for under 72 hours, but children are also held in

hotels or other inappropriate locations, such as secure juvenile

detention facilities. Over the past decade, with the responsibility

for transport of children that came with the transfer of physical

custody to ORR, ICE had started to expand its use of child

appropriate shelters and instituting policies governing the

hours when it is appropriate to transport children.

Due to the high numbers of child migrants from Central

America in the summer of 2014, ICE initiated a revision

of transport procedures. One impetus was to reduce the

time burden on agents of accompanying large numbers

of children being delivered to ORR facilities, but ICE

also took into consideration NGO concerns about the

inappropriateness of having law enforcement agents

accompany children. In the fall of 2014, ICE’s JFRMU began

using a private contractor, MVM Inc., which employs an array

of professionals (from former law enforcement to child care

workers) who are assigned depending on an individualized

assessment of the child’s needs and safety factors. These

transport agents are unarmed and not in law enforcement

uniforms—recent changes that have the potential to make

these agents less intimidating to children.

In addition to transport to ORR facilities, ICE is responsible

for returning unaccompanied children to their countries of

origin. To accomplish this, ICE agents accompany children to

the home country and physically transfer custody of the child

to a representative of the child’s home country. Alternatively,

unaccompanied minors can be returned on Justice Prisoner

& Alien Transportation (JPATS) ﬂights operated by the U.S.

Marshals Service.

Challenges. There are periodic concerns with transportation

practices that become more frequent during periods of

higher child migration ﬂows. These concerns include

transporting children in the middle of night, using federal

law enforcement personnel instead of contracting with child-

appropriate workers, and using unsuitable accommodations

for stopovers during transport. While ICE’s JFRMU

expanded use of child appropriate shelters and civilian-

clothed childcare professionals are important steps in the

right direction, the speciﬁc contract with MVM, Inc. that was

entered into in the fall of 2014 remains to be evaluated.

Placement of Unaccompanied Children

Current Practice. Under the TVPRA, ORR is required to promptly

place unaccompanied children “in the least restrictive setting

that is in the best interest of the child.”

The Homeland Security

Act (HSA) similarly requires ORR to ensure that the “interests

of the child are considered” in unaccompanied children’s care

and custody decisions and actions.

The Flores Settlement

agreement stipulates the release priorities for unaccompanied

children, in this order: parent, legal guardian, adult relative, or

adult designated by the parent or guardian to licensed programs

and others approved by ORR.

Once unaccompanied children are transferred to the care and

custody of ORR, most are placed within a nationwide network

of child-oriented shelter programs. Shelters are funded by ORR

and operated by non-governmental organizations (both large

and small, national and local, faith-based and secular), or in some

cases by local governments that contract with ORR to provide

a structured and supervised residential care environment.

Under the HSA, ORR has responsibility for care and placement

determinations, oversight and inspection of facilities, family

reuniﬁcation, maintenance of statistical information, planning to

ensure legal counsel, and maintenance of information on Child

Advocate and legal representation resources.

Shelter programs range from large institutional shelters

housing hundreds of children, to mid-size facilities, to small

group home-like settings. In addition to shelters, ORR

contracts with a number of foster care programs around

the United States which provide care for the youngest,

most vulnerable children, and for trafﬁcked, pregnant,

and parenting teens. ORR also contracts with a few

secure juvenile detention facilities and with residential or

therapeutic treatment centers for children with behavioral

health needs.

The following chart describes the numbers of facilities or

placement programs available for unaccompanied children.

Because of the size of the facilities, the number of children

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ROUNDTABLE REPORT JULY

2015

in the shelter care programs is much higher than those in

smaller programs such as foster care.

Having access to a range of care options for unaccompanied

children—from foster care to group care to shelter care to secure

care—is in keeping with both the Flores Settlement Agreement

and the TVPRA legislation by enabling placement of children

in the least restrictive setting appropriate to their individual

needs.

The TVPRA further requires that any secure placement

decisions be reviewed monthly, and the Flores Settlement

grants children the right to judicial review of their placements if

they disagree with the type of placement they are given.

Challenges. While ORR has access to a range of placement

options, it primarily relies on large institutions for placing

children. The federal government’s predominant reliance upon

a large institutional model has been a concern since before

custody of unaccompanied children was transferred from the

Immigration and Naturalization Service to ORR. Now that

the custody of these children is under the Health and Human

Service Department’s division of the Administration for

Children and Families, the continued reliance on this model

is perplexing. U.S. child welfare programs have decreased or

eliminated institutional placements, except for children with

the most complex health or mental health needs. Best practice

standards for short-term shelters housing homeless and

runaway youth set an upper limit at “no more than 20 children

and youth at one location.”

It therefore remains troubling

that large institutions continue to be the federal government’s

primary care and custody model for unaccompanied children.

Home Studies Prior to Family Reuniﬁcation

Current Practice. Unaccompanied children can be released

from ORR custody to relatives or family friends who meet

certain requirements (called “sponsors”). Under the provisions

of the TVPRA, ORR is required to verify a sponsor’s identity

and relationship to the child and to determine that the sponsor

can provide for a child’s “physical and mental well-being”

and does not pose a risk to the child.

Under the TVPRA,

ORR is mandated to complete a home study for children in

the following situations: child trafﬁcking victims; children

with disabilities or other special needs; children who have

experienced physical or sexual abuse, or those with mental

health issues.

LIRS is one of several national organizations

able to conduct home studies across the country, a service

provided by LIRS to ORR and the former INS since 1994.

Home studies assess the suitability of a child’s placement

with a particular sponsor through interviews with the child,

caseworker, and family members; completion of a home

visit and suitability assessment; and an analysis of other

information related to the child’s speciﬁc needs. Home study

reports include a recommendation about reuniﬁcation with a

particular sponsor, followed by a review and recommendation

by a case coordinator (described below), after which ORR

makes the ﬁnal decision regarding reuniﬁcation.

Challenges. The federal government routinely requires home

studies for separated refugee children reunifying with relatives

in the United States under the U.S. Department of State’s refugee

resettlement program. The same principle should be applied in

family placements involving this population of unaccompanied

children; however, despite their common usage and requirement

in other types of placement decisions involving children, ORR

requests home studies on a very limited basis. Home studies are

a protective and preventive measure in safeguarding children,

Total Number of ORR Placement Options for Children

All programs are licensed in accordance with state and local

child licensing laws

Placement Types

Fiscal

Year 2014

Long-term foster care: Children with legal claims

but no viable family sponsors are placed with

foster families while their legal cases proceed.

Transitional foster care: Short-term, home-based

placements with foster families, while family

reuniﬁcation is pursued. Reserved for young

children, trafﬁcking victims, pregnant or parent-

ing teens, and children with special needs.

Shelter: Facilities ranging in capacity from under

20 children to over 200, usually privately run.

Children are placed in shelters pending family

reuniﬁcation.

Residential treatment centers: Therapeutic pro-

grams ranging in security level for children with

more severe mental health needs.

Staff-secure facilities: Medium secure juvenile

detention facilities with lower staff-to-child ratios.

Secure facilities: Sub-contracted county juvenile

detention facilities.

ROUNDTABLE REPORT JULY

2015

particularly when children have been separated from caregivers

for many years, when children have not previously lived with a

particular relative caregiver, or when identiﬁed risk factors are

present. A higher number of unaccompanied children ﬁt this

vulnerable proﬁle than current home study usage reﬂects.

Case Coordination

Current Practice. Since 2010, ORR has relied upon General

Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT) to provide case

management services, as well as the review of home studies

and sponsor documentation, to inform ORR’s release

decisions for unaccompanied children. GDIT is a for-proﬁt

contracting agency whose traditional areas of expertise have

been in defense, engineering, and information technology.

For ORR contracts, GDIT employs child welfare professionals

to conduct the review of family reuniﬁcation or transfer

documents and to make recommendations regarding release.

Challenges. What ORR currently calls “Case Coordination”

(previously called a “Third-Party Review”) was originally

designed to provide a neutral appraisal of reuniﬁcation or

transfer options. Since GDIT took on this function, this

process has moved away from a quasi-independent third

party review approach—where an independent entity upholds

the best interest of the child in a system replete with other

institutional pressures—to functioning as ORR staff.

In review meetings where release and transfer decisions are

made, typically the only people present are the facility staff, the

GDIT case coordinator, the ORR federal ﬁeld supervisor (FFS),

and sometimes an ICE agent. The child in question and his or

her legal representative or Child Advocate are rarely allowed

to participate or make a recommendation regarding these

issues, nor is the child’s parent or legal guardian. The child’s

wishes and legal concerns are not independently represented

in the decision-making process, leaving the child and the legal

guardian with little to no voice. A parent who has a child in

ORR custody has no means to recommend a placement in

an ORR facility near the parent, nor can he or she request a

review regarding reuniﬁcation decisions. Similarly, a child’s

lawyer or Child Advocate may not have the opportunity to

adequately express his or her concerns regarding the release

of a child to an inappropriate caregiver or discuss how the

transfer of a child may impact the child’s legal case. Finally,

the ORR system provides for no neutral external review for

the decisions made. While LIRS understands the need to

subcontract out responsibilities of compliance monitoring for

family reuniﬁcation applications and transfer applications, the

need for more systemic checks and balances remains.

Family Reuniﬁcation Timeframes

Current Practice. For the majority of children, ORR facilitates

placement with relatives or family friends living in the United

States. Since ORR assumed responsibility for the care and

custody of unaccompanied children, the amount of time that

most children spend in federal custody prior to placement with

sponsors has been steadily decreasing, in part as a response

to budgetary pressures. This trend became more noticeable

starting in fall 2011 with the increase in the number of children

in ORR custody. Prior to this time, children remained in ORR

custody for an average of 72 days. By the summer of 2012,

ORR accelerated the placement of children with sponsors,

with the average length of time in ORR custody ranging from

40-45 days.

In early 2014, the average length of stay was

approximately 35 days.

During the summer of 2014, as part

of the U.S. government’s response to the large increase in

unaccompanied children, ORR began placing children with

U.S. relatives more rapidly and with less thorough background

check procedures in order to reduce lengths of stay. With each

signiﬁcant increase in arrivals of unaccompanied children, ORR

revised its reuniﬁcation procedures in order to create bed space

for children awaiting ORR placement from CBP holding cells.

Challenges. ORR has issued a number of shifting directives to

shelter care providers establishing “length of stay” goals for

children in its custody. These directives appear to be driven

by ﬁnancial pressures rather than children’s best interests.

In domestic child welfare situations, institutional interests

are counter-balanced by the involvement of guardians ad

litem and juvenile court judges who are not part of those

institutions, yet in the U.S. system for unaccompanied

children, even Child Advocates are dependent upon ORR for

funding. Despite the fact that ORR has potentially conﬂicting

budgetary and caregiving interests, there is no external

independent authority reviewing care and custody decisions.

Safe Release and Fingerprinting

Current Practice. Potential sponsors for unaccompanied

children must undergo a ﬁngerprint clearance and

ROUNDTABLE REPORT JULY

2015

background check as part of the ORR documentation

requirements established to protect the safety of the child.

LIRS operates a national network of 20 ﬁngerprinting sites

located in nonproﬁt organizations. The Safe Release Support

ﬁngerprinting program has been successful in providing

a less costly and less intimidating location to complete

sponsor processing and necessary paperwork, while also

connecting families with local legal, health and mental health

care, education, and social service providers.

Challenges. Working under tight timelines, ORR does not

uniformly require or wait for ﬁngerprint results before

releasing children, which raises some serious safety

concerns. The ﬁngerprinting process is also often a critical

missed opportunity to support sponsors and set children

and families up for successful reuniﬁcations by providing

additional sponsor orientation and education about the family

reuniﬁcation process, legal proceedings, school enrollment

requirements, and community resources in order to create a

safety net and support system for children and families.

Follow-Up Services

Current Practice. After release to their sponsors, and despite the

signiﬁcant challenges inherent in the reuniﬁcation process, the

percentage of released children who receive follow-up services

ﬂuctuates and is subject to allocation of funding.

When follow-up services are provided, they greatly assist

children and their families and provide a means to track

the welfare of children for a period of time following

release. Under the current system, the only children who

routinely receive follow-up services are that small number

(estimated at less than 15%) who were found to face a level

of risk warranting a home study of the prospective sponsor.

Recommendations for services to other children whose

situations are tenuous are frequently denied by ORR.

Where provided, follow-up services offer signiﬁcant

protections to unaccompanied children. They emphasize

safety, school enrollment, connection to legal assistance

and local community services, and the critical importance

of continuing with immigration proceedings. These services

follow the child in the event the child changes address, and

they include at minimum a monthly contact with the child,

with home visits and reports required at 14-day, 60-day,

and 180-day intervals after the child’s reuniﬁcation with the

sponsor. At 180 days after reuniﬁcation, the child’s situation is

assessed to determine whether continued follow-up services

are needed, with extension requests decided upon by ORR.

Challenges. The number and proportion of children receiving

follow-up care is inadequate, and decision-making priorities

regarding which children are initially referred and later

extended remain unclear. Service providers working with

unaccompanied children report that many have suffered

signiﬁcant experiences of trauma, including as victims

of violence, severe maltreatment, and sexual assault.

Researchers evaluating follow-up services in four program

locations found that, “Many UAC may be ‘at risk’ even if they

are not ﬂagged as such by detention center staff.”

Legal Services and Legal Representation

Current Practice. Children in ORR shelters are provided with

an orientation to the legal system by nonproﬁt legal service

organizations offering “Know Your Rights” presentations.

Similarly, parents and sponsors in many communities where

children go are provided with legal orientation presentations as

part of the release process. These presentations generally provide

an overview of the legal process and legal options available,

an individual screening to determine potential legal options,

and information on securing legal representation. They do not

guarantee legal representation during immigration proceedings.

The Guatemalan Melisa and Beverly, 24 and 7 years old, inside one

of the coaches that go toward Ixtepec. In Tapachula, Chiapas, they

were intercepted by agents of the National Migration Institute to

whom they had to deliver 1,000 pesos (about $100) in order for

them to be able to continue their journey.

Photo credit: Ruido.

ROUNDTABLE REPORT JULY

2015

Legal service funding increased signiﬁcantly in 2014, yet so

did the number of children needing legal assistance. Children

still come to immigration court alone and unrepresented,

left to navigate a complex system in a foreign language with

far-reaching implications for their safety and well-being. The

issues and consequences addressed in immigration court are

arguably similar in magnitude to those dealt with in juvenile

court, where children are assured either legal representation,

a guardian ad litem, or both. Nonetheless, unaccompanied

children lack the protections children have in juvenile court

and at best navigate a patchwork of legal services, with many

receiving no representation at all.

Ultimately, there remains no guarantee of government-

appointed legal counsel for minors in immigration

proceedings, meaning that children still face immigration

court and removal proceedings alone. While families and

children are allowed to obtain their own legal representation,

most children and their families do not have the ﬁnancial

resources to pay for a private attorney.

ORR and the

Department of Justice provide some funding for legal

representation, but, despite additional funding and the

establishment of a “Justice AmeriCorps” in 2014, the gap

between the need and available legal services grew wider.

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Syracuse

University, which maintains statistics on the legal process,

reports that children make up about 11% of the immigration

court caseload.

Moreover, “The representation rate of

children in immigration court has dropped precipitously, from

71% in 2012 to as low as 14-15% in some months of 2014. As

data on case outcomes indicates, legal representation vastly

increases the chances that a child will appear in immigration

court: Over the last decade, only 6.1% of children with counsel

received in absentia (in the child’s absence) removal orders,

compared with 64.2% of unrepresented children.”

Challenges. Increased DOJ and ORR funding for legal

representation is a welcome move in the right direction, but it

is not enough. Nonproﬁt organizations and the pro bono legal

community simply do not have the capacity to fully meet the

need. As a result, many children are unrepresented. The rapid

and constant turnover of children within shelter facilities and

in an absence of safeguards in the legal system, create a serious

challenge to effective and child appropriate legal rights and

representation services.

Many children are released from ORR

custody before they have attended a presentation. Nonproﬁt and

volunteer legal service providers are unable to individually screen

all children in order to identify those with possible legal relief.

Furthermore, limits on the DOJ “Justice AmeriCorps” funding

means that youth ages 16 and 17, the largest segment of

the unaccompanied minor population, are excluded from

being helped by the program. Thus, a signiﬁcant number of

unaccompanied children may be ordered removed because they

lack an attorney, not because they lack a claim to legal protection.

Child Advocates

Current Practice. The TVPRA authorized ORR to appoint “Child

Advocates” (immigration guardians ad litem) for children

in immigration proceedings. While attorneys represent a

child’s expressed wishes, Child Advocates are intended to

represent a child’s best interests within immigration custody

and proceedings. Conceptually similar to guardians ad

litem in juvenile court, Child Advocates are appointed to the

most vulnerable unaccompanied children in immigration

proceedings, such as children acting against their own best

interests (e.g., asking to be placed in, or returned to, harmful

or life-threatening situations). In other cases, children may

be too young to participate in proceedings, they may have a

mental health issue or physical disability, there may be a custody

dispute over which parent or relative should care for the child,

the child’s wishes may differ from the parent’s wishes for the

child, or there may be other complicated situations in which

there is disagreement about what is best for a particular child. In

these types of cases, a Child Advocate meets regularly with the

child to understand the child’s story and background, gathers

information from different sources about the child’s individual

circumstances, and makes recommendations to decision

makers about what is in the child’s best interests.

Challenges. Child Advocates play an important role in the

children’s cases to which they are assigned; however, they

are provided for only a small percentage of unaccompanied

children. This contrasts with the federal government’s

requirement in the domestic child welfare context that the

states provide guardians ad litem for all children in abuse

and neglect proceedings, as a prerequisite to certain federal

funding.

At the end of FY 2014, ORR expanded funding

for Child Advocate services, but these services are still only

provided to a small portion of cases and only in a handful

Documents you may be interested

pdf to jpg c# open source : Create secure pdf online Library software class asp.net windows .net ajax LIRS_RoundtableReport_WEB1-part587