I read it is about 100 000 children at our border

[Mira]

There is work to be done and we cannot forget about them. It needs to be ever present in our minds as a more important issue than just about any other.

[pandr32]

1. Is this true?

Any idea where you read that (because it is such an important human issue to keep track of) ?

[Igel]

3. Yes, no, maybe.

The post is poorly written.

It doesn't say date the measurement's made. If for 2015, there's https://www.npr.org/2019/11/20/781279252/u-n-expert-clarifies-statistic-on-u-s-detention-of-migrant-children . That was the most recent burst of news with a 100k figure in it. It made all the news for about 20 minutes before it submerged in the Lethe as inconvenient and a distraction from the real truth.

It doesn't say the status of the children. If the US held 500k family units, it's possible that at any given time there were 100k kids held--but mostly with their parents, which isn't what you think when you read the OP subject line.

It doesn't say duration of the measurement--if it's the total for the year, then they held far more than 100k kids (with their parents) in 2019. But the number of "unaccompanied minors" by now must be close enough to 100k that liberal rounding up gets us there: https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/department-of-homeland-security/468025-us-detains-record-75000-minors was for the first 9 months of the calendar year and https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/sw-border-migration adds in more for the first two months of the 2020 fiscal year. Note that these are, at this point, rarely kids separated from their parent(s) or (legal) guardian(s) and only then put in the "unaccompanied" column.

Note that "unaccompanied minors" may not mean what we think it means. Yes, it means kids without any adult present. It also means a kid with the right kind of adult present--one whose a parent or legal guardian, with some way of showing this in a reasonable way, or one whose not on record as having proven themselves unfit by virtue of some criminal activity. (We can debate the justice of this process, but we can't really debate why the label's applied--that's the definition and the word's meaning in this context, and it means no more and no less than the official definition.)

It also doesn't indicate if it's actual reports from those in charge or if it's some estimated claim by some NGO.

[pandr32]

4. Just saw this--thank you!

[teach1st]

2. Could you clarify what you mean by 100,000 children at our border?

You can't mean separated children, can you? I couldn't find numbers anywhere close to that.

From October, Vox: The Trump administration just admitted that it separated an additional 1,500 immigrant families

The Trump administration has conceded it separated 1,556 immigrant parents and children more than it had previously admitted in court, bringing the total count of families separated to almost 5,500.

The government had originally admitted to separating about 2,800 families when a California federal court ordered it to end the practice in June 2018 as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU.

But it has since identified more separations; approximately 1,090 occurred after and in violation of the court order. The additional 1,556 separations disclosed on Thursday, which included 207 children under the age of 5, happened before the Trump administration implemented its “zero tolerance” policy aimed at prosecuting anyone who crosses the border without authorization. Officials have cited the zero tolerance policy as the cause of family separations.

(Edited to add) I found this: U.N. Expert Clarifies Statistic On U.S. Detention Of Migrant Children

The author of a sweeping new U.N. study on the detaining and jailing of children worldwide acknowledges that he erred in saying the U.S. is holding more than 100,000 children in migration-related detention. The author, human rights lawyer Manfred Nowak, says he wasn't aware at the time that the number was from 2015. He adds that it reflected the number of children detained during the entire year.

Nowak acknowledges that his use of the statistic was misleading, but he also maintains that his main point about the U.S. having high incarceration and detention rates for children still stands. In an interview with NPR on Wednesday, he said he was citing a number from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

"I used the UNHCR data because it was the last UNHCR figure that was published, and that goes back to the year 2015," Nowak said. "And I haven't checked it that clearly in the press conference. So that was, of course, misleading."