First stop for migrant kids: For-profit detention center
Source: Reuters
U.S.FEBRUARY 14, 2019 / 10:10 AM / UPDATED AN HOUR AGO
First stop for migrant kids: For-profit detention center
Yeganeh Torbati, Kristina Cooke
8 MIN READ
HOMESTEAD, Fla., SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (Reuters) - For a growing number of migrant children, this is their first home in America: a sprawling campus dotted with beige buildings, massive white tents and metal trailers, next door to a U.S. Air Force base.
The federal government is holding nearly 1,600 migrant children here, at what it calls a “temporary influx” shelter. It has added 250 beds in the last two months and could soon house 2,350 children who crossed the nation’s southern border on their own.
It is the country’s only such temporary quarters for migrant children, after the closure last month of a similar facility in south Texas, and the only shelter for migrant youths that is run by a for-profit company.
The site is a topic of heated debate, as immigration advocates and Democratic legislators complain many traumatized children who fled violence and poverty in their home countries are held in an institutionalized setting for too long before being released to sponsoring families who can better care for them.
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As the government seeks to rapidly expand the site’s capacity, it has waived a federal requirement at Homestead meant to ensure children receive sufficient health care. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which cares for the children, previously required Homestead to maintain a clinician-to-child ratio of 1 to 12 to provide mental health services, according to a November 2018 report. But that requirement has been relaxed to 1 to 20, a Homestead program director said on Wednesday.
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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-children/first-stop-for-migrant-kids-for-profit-detention-center-idUSKCN1Q3261
