A recent report published by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has brought to light significant deficiencies in procedures for safeguarding unaccompanied migrant children arriving in the US.
Tasked with sheltering these vulnerable children upon their arrival, HHS has been criticized for hastily transferring them to adult sponsors in the US without carrying out a thorough screening. In particular, the agency has allegedly neglected to conduct timely safety assessments after the children’s release.
According to the findings of the OIG’s report, 16% of child case files lacked documentation of sponsor background checks by the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHS-ORR) in March and April 2021. A substantial 19% of cases where children were released to sponsors still pending FBI or state checks, had not been updated with results. These failures in procedure introduce potential risk to the children’s safety.
The report further disclosed that HHS had failed in more than a fifth of cases to make mandatory follow-up calls to the children a month after they began living with their sponsors. In some instances, these essential follow-up calls were delayed by almost a year. Furthermore, the investigation found instances where government workers did not perform necessary safety checks such as investigating whether the sponsors had a history of child abuse or verifying the legitimacy of the sponsors’ addresses.
These failures in safety checks coincided with reports of an increase in migrants illegally crossing the southwest border since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, as noted in Pew Research. Consequently, HHS-ORR was under pressure to rapidly move children from crowded border processing centers to shelters and caregiver homes.
Along with these procedural deficiencies, there have also been reports of migrant children being exploited in hazardous industrial jobs, contravening child labor laws. In response, the Biden administration has established a joint task force with the Department of Labor (DOL) to combat these child labor abuses and ensure better case management for these children.
The complete outline of the report, including these concerning findings, can be found on the JURIST website.