Where Are the Refugee Children?

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Where Are the Refugee Children?

With hundreds of unaccompanied refugee children pouring into the New York City area, a question arises: How good a host are we for these young refugees? It’s a question that is difficult to answer, as officials are not even saying exactly where these unaccompanied refugee children are being sheltered.

According to the government agency responsible for resettling refugee children, shelters for unaccompanied refugee children exist in New York State, but details about them or their locations are fuzzy.

The refugee process goes generally like this: The children, or what the federal government calls “Unaccompanied Alien Children,” arrive alone on the U.S. southwest border, primarily from the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Some of these kids are referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement by immigration authorities, usually the Department of Homeland Security.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement is part of the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and after taking over custody of the children, the Office houses them in shelters that they operate, or with private organizations that are approved by the government to help with refugees, like the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“We do not have city or county level information to provide, but I can say that there are 20 Unaccompanied Alien Children program shelters in the state of New York, with a capacity of 1,175 beds,” Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesperson for the Administration for Children and Families, wrote over email.

This number seems far below the necessary capacity to house the number of children that the Office eventually resettled, let alone housed. Office of Refugee Resettlement data shows that 5,737 children in New York State were resettled with sponsors in fiscal year 2014 (October 2013 to September 2014). The Office estimates that children stay in their shelters for about 30 days.

And its website says that shelters are “operated by non-profit agencies, usually as group homes,” and that most shelters house fewer than 50 refugee children. Thus, it appears that many children may be temporarily housed by the government and then moved to the care of private agencies.

Two non-profit agencies, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, provide foster care for unaccompanied refugee children. But whether this is temporary care until the Office of Refugee Resettlement finds longer-term housing with sponsors or family, or whether foster care is a long-term solution itself, is unclear.

Despite repeated calls and questions sent to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and the two non-profit agencies, none of the organizations provided specifics about the nature of the housing that is provided or where care facilities are located in New York City or the surrounding area.

In testimony before Congress last Wednesday arguing for increased funding for resettlement programs, a representative of the bishops’ conference said that the conference provides “short-term and long-term foster care,” with foster families licensed by the state, “home studies of sponsors” with whom children will eventually be resettled, and “post-release services.”

Back in June, the New York Post reported that hundreds of children were being housed in shelters in Westchester County.

 

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