Children have faced “frequent lice outbreaks” at one emergency shelter in Texas set up to handle the surge of illegal immigrant juveniles jumping the border, according to a new court-ordered audit.
At another shelter in San Diego, children were denied the chance to place phone calls to their family for up to three weeks while authorities tried to figure out if the calls were appropriate and safe.
The problem has apparently been fixed, and children can now place a call within two days of arriving, but the bungle is one of many the Biden administration has made as it tries to handle the ongoing migrant surge, which includes a record number of illegal immigrant children showing up without parents.
At the shelter in Texas, the government rushed in volunteers to help the children, but forgot to give them any directions on what to do, the audit found. And when children said they needed a doctor or needed to speak with a counselor the volunteers were “reluctant” to take them, despite being told every such request should be honored.
Girls suffered panic attacks and faced “frequent lice outbreaks.”
“Some of the girls would stay in their bunks for most of the day and ask to skip meals,” said Andrea Sheridan Ordin and Dr. Paul H. Wise, the auditors appointed by Judge Dolly M. Gee to report back on conditions faced by Unaccompanied Alien Children, or UAC, in government custody.
The auditors said girls refused to take showers because the facility didn’t give them clean clothes to put on afterward, and there was a shortage of socks, underwear and soap.
But the facility is now offering daily Zumba exercise classes, the auditor noted.
The findings come just ahead of a hearing where Judge Gee is expected to take stock of the children’s treatment during the surge.
The Washington Times has sought comment from HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, the division that oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which runs the UAC program.
The audit did credit the Biden administration for speeding up release of children, first from Border Patrol custody into the care of the federal Health and Human Services Department, and then from HHS to families or other sponsors.
The numbers are staggering.
As of Monday Homeland Security had 867 children in its custody at the border, while ORR had 14,661 children in its custody at shelters. That’s a major improvement from the end of March, when there were nearly 6,000 children being held at the border, and from early May, when there were more than 22,000 children mired in the ORR shelters.
ORR has been pumping children through its doors at a stunning pace, including several days when more than 700 children were cleared for release each day.
The balance between the children’s safety and the rights of parents or relatives, including those living in the U.S. illegally, has proved tough to strike.
When a relative or other sponsor is eventually approved to take custody of the child, the audit said often times they are given only a couple of hours’ notice to show up, as the government tries to push children through the system as quickly as possible, in order to make room for the hundreds of new arrivals each day.
The audit also found a lack of staffing able to handle case management, which is the process of matching children with sponsors. Juveniles complained that they waited weeks to speak with a manager.
Some of the children told their own stories in court filings earlier this week.
One 17-year-old girl from El Salvador said she’s 6 months pregnant and is getting the right medical care at a shelter in Long Beach, California. But she said she’s having trouble connecting with her sponsor, a cousin of her father’s, who lives in Los Angeles.
“I’ve asked for clean clothes but haven’t gotten them. I asked for pants because my legs were cold and they said I’ve get them but I never did. When I ask for certain things, sometimes I never get it and then I get tired of asking so I give up,” the girl, whose name was redacted from the public filings, said.
A 13-year-old from Honduras, staying at a shelter in San Antonio, said bullying from older children has been a problem.
“I have recreation once a day,” the child wrote. “I walk around. We get about 10 minutes outside. It’s once a day, except yesterday and the day before we didn’t go outside.”
A 17-year-old girl from Honduras said they made the children sleep during the day, then got angry when the children weren’t sleepy at night. Some staffers refused to let them use the bathroom.
“If you asked for more food, they wouldn’t let you have it but they would sit at tables where we could see them and they would eat and laugh at us,” the girl said.
She also told of adults coming and taking some children outside at night, spreading fears of kidnappings.
Some children did report generally good treatment, including regular phone calls to relatives. One even said they got to make special Mother’s Day calls back home.
Many of the children specifically remarked on the English classes they are being given along with other schooling the government is providing. And some children did report being able to shower every other day.
Sign up for Daily Newsletters
