Central American Refugee Children Face New Peril in the United States Mary Turck - Al Jazeera America
go to original January 30, 2016

American sponsors have subjected vulnerable Central American refugee children to sexual abuse, labor trafficking and starvation, according to a bipartisan report released on Friday by the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations. It confirmed similar findings by The Associated Press on Jan. 25 that identified more than two dozen cases of abuse and neglect. In one case, a trafficking ring in Marion, Ohio, forced six teens to work on an egg farm for 12 hours a day and did not allow them to attend school. In other states, fraudulent sponsors tried to get placements of children who were not related to them.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who chairs the subcommittee, said there were “serious, systemic defects” in the screening process at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for placing “uniquely vulnerable” unaccompanied children with supposed sponsors. In a statement on Thursday, he said the trafficking case in his state “could likely have been prevented if HHS had adopted common-sense measures for screening sponsors and checking in on the well-being of at-risk children — protections that are standard in foster care systems run by the states, including Ohio.”

Failure to properly investigate temporary placement homes and weak child protection policies have left young migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. vulnerable to abuse and mistreatment. With more Central American children arriving daily, the U.S. government needs to strengthen, not weaken, its oversight of the homes where minors are placed.

After they cross into the U.S., some refugees turn themselves in to immigration authorities, asking for asylum. Others make their asylum pleas after being captured and detained. Under U.S. law, unaccompanied minors seeking asylum must be sent to a facility run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The agency then places children with families while their cases are processed. Sponsors — typically a friend or family member already in the United States — house the children and get them in school.

The resettlement office has internal procedures for conducting background checks and verifying that a sponsor is a friend or relative and not a human trafficker or someone with a criminal record. But according to the AP report, overwhelmed by the number of children needing placements, HHS began relaxing its placement procedures in 2014, when the arrivals of unaccompanied children reached record numbers.

Read the rest at Al Jazeera America

Related: How Uncle Sam Wound Up Trafficking Innocent Kids (New York Post)

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

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