As more and more unaccompanied minor, migrant children pour across the US-Mexico border, the Biden administration is scrambling to figure out how and where to house them. As such, the administration is not requiring "FBI fingerprint checks of caregivers at its rapidly expanding network of emergency sites," reports the AP.
This move to remove the failsafe of background checks for caregivers has raised alarms for "child welfare experts who say the waiver compromises safety." New emergency sites, operated by private contractors and not the HHS, are being set up in the southwest. "Vetting procedures" for those who will be staffing these sites have been "waived."
"Staff and volunteers directly caring for children at new emergency sites don’t have to undergo FBI fingerprint checks, which use criminal databases not accessible to the public and can overcome someone changing their name or using a false identity," the AP reports.
HHS said that public record criminal background checks are being used to vet employees. These kinds of checks take less time for results to be returned, but are also "reliant on the subject providing correct information." Meaning that if someone lies on their background check form, accurate information will not be returned.
These facilities increases the current capacity by double. But these emergency sites are not subject to state licensing, they are not required to provide the same services that HHS does, and "They also cost far more, an estimated $775 per child per day."
In order to house the children and teens, and get them out of the temporary detainment facilities at the border, the Biden administration has set up tent camps, opened convention centers and military bases to house children, as well as having turned to private contractors to undertake their care.
As regards those private contractors, HHS said that "In the Emergency Intake Sites, HHS is implementing the standards of care used for children in an emergency response setting." The AP reported that "those giving direct care are supervised by federal employees or others who have passed fingerprint-based background checks," per HHS.
HHS opened an emergency site in Midland, Tex., in March, where district attorney Laura Nodolf said that without fingerprint checks, "we truly do not know who the individual is who is providing direct care."
"That's placing the children under care of HHS in the path, potentially, of a sex offender," Nodolf said. "They are putting these children in a position of becoming potential victims."
The Midland camp has already had some problems, as it has been noted by on-site officials that there were not enough new clothes. Regulators for the state marked concerns about water safety. Bottled water has since been provided.
The children and teens are eligible to cross the border to be housed, fed, and educated, according to the Biden administration, that calls their approach "humanitarian." The process, as outlined by HHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, is that children are meant to be turned over from border control services to the Department of Housing and Human Services, which agency will then find suitable sponsors for the children across the US.
There are currently over 18,000 unaccompanied minors in custody. For those that are waiting for these minors to be released into familial care in the US, the wait is too long.
The AP spoke to a mother in Virginia who is awaiting her 17-year-old son's arrival from El Salvador. Her son is currently in Dallas after having left El Salvador with the intention of joining his mother. He crossed into the US on March 9, but his mother didn't hear from him until March 20.
His mother wants to know "why they are making it so difficult." She has called HHS to try to get her son released, but they have told her that her son's case needs to be processed. "I know that we are in a pandemic, but maybe I think that it is that they are behind schedule, that maybe there are a lot of people there," she said.
An attorney for the National Center for Youth Law, Leecia Welch, said that they would pay "close attention to whether this temporary waiver becomes standard operating practice."
"Given the urgency of the current placement crisis, families deserve the same flexibility as the for-profit companies contracting with the federal government," she said.
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