3/2/21

By Josh Rubin

The following is a response to a question I am repeatedly asked: on the issue of how to handle migrant children at our borders, what would I do instead? Here are some thoughts.

The claim is that the current flow and expected increase in the flow of unaccompanied minors into the country will exceed hard-walled shelter capacity, necessitating the extensive use of temporary influx shelters which are determined to be comparatively detrimental to child welfare. This discussion accepts the premise.

There are three variable dimensions that need consideration. Two are closely related: space and processing capacity. The other is the flow itself, and how that might be varied.

First the flow. There are a number of factors that might cause an increase in the rate of UC border crossings, encounters, and the need for space and processing. The most obvious is the most intractable near term: the factors like hunger, poverty, insecurity and climate change that drive migration itself. This is ultimately the most important, but represents a project with the longest horizon.

Specifically, in the near term, the flow of minors is potentially more malleable. Two practices that we are aware of “manufacture” UCs. One is the practice of indiscriminate separation of minors from adult traveling companions, often close relations but not with any means of documenting their role of either temporary entrustment with the child, or actual de facto guardianship. In part, this is possibly a misunderstanding of cultural differences, one that applies a normative nuclear family paradigm to one with a more flexible view of relations based on extended family.

Another, more recent, development is an artifact of the application of the ban on accepting migrants purportedly owing to the threat of Covid contagion represented by migrants. The ban, which is being broadly applied, leads to very rapid expulsion of migrants encountered, but does not expel minors. This exerts pressure on families to self-separate, to send minors across, many times with the hope that adult family members will join them later.

I do not know of any estimates of what proportion of the arrival of UCs owe to either or to the sum of these scenarios. But it should be considered that the isolation and the burdens on any system for caring for children are increased manyfold by the absence of adults in the migrant unit.

The next consideration is the actual process of receiving, caring for, and delivering children to sponsors where they will pursue legal paths to a resolution of their status. Although the length of this process has been recently severely abused to disincentivize migration, let us assume that there is some legitimate function to a process that evaluates the placement process with an eye on the welfare of the minor child.

To do this, we have to know more. We have to know what the risk is of a child being trafficked for labor or sexual purposes, or for placing the child in an abusive household. And then we have to evaluate the steps necessary to mitigate whatever risk there is, to reduce it to an acceptable level. The risk of possible misplacement must be weighed against the certain risk of being kept in an institutional and restrictive setting, which is better known and documented.

It must be noted that there is a high rate of child abuse in our country as a whole, and so far as I know, no evidence that abuse of children would occur at a higher rate in families of migrants than in the population as a whole, and that safeguards against abuse, though admittedly inadequate in our country as a whole, would be any less adequate for these families.

The question of trafficking is a different category and suggests criminal network involvement. It would be reasonable to suggest that any indication that a migrant minor does not know their sponsor is certainly justification for a harder look.

This discussion should lead to consideration of a few avenues to explore to relieve pressure on the system in the near term. First, although it may seem counterintuitive, allowing families to remain together would reduce the burden on the entire immigration system. Families are not just a social unit, but an economic one. Families are much better at taking care of children than are institutions. Money spent on institutionalization of separated children is enormous and would be far better spent lending support to families. This suggests we should keep families together, allow minor children to cross with adult relatives, and immediately suspend Title 42 expulsions.

We can change the emphasis of the vetting procedure to emphasize trafficking risk by testing immediately for evidence that the child does not know his unrelated sponsor. Where trafficking is not suspected we can accept some risk of abuse, at least for determination of the whens and ifs of placement, and instead concentrate consideration of that society-wide problem for the home visit process.

Finally, the question of physical space that raises the specter of influx facilities already known to have tragic effects on the lives of children who have been thus confined, is addressed by slowing the influx, and taking a more triaged approach to vetting. The breathing room this might give would provide a benevolent bureaucracy the space and time it needs to build more child appropriate spaces, one that we will need to accommodate a changing country, and a changing world.

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