Zero-Tolerance Prosecution and Family Reunification

Beds at the Casa San Diego, a shelter for children of detained migrants, are seen in this photo provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in San Diego

As another PUBLIC SERVICE, here is the subject fact sheet released by DHS and HHS on Saturday. [Phrases were highlighted by me.]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 23, 2018
Contact: HHS Press Office
202-690-6343
media@hhs.gov

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Health and Human Services (HHS) have a process established to ensure that family members know the location of their children and have regular communication after separation to ensure that those adults who are subject to removal are reunited with their children for the purposes of removal. The United States government knows the location of all children in its custody and is working to reunite them with their families.

As part of the apprehension, detention and prosecution process, illegal aliens, adults and children, are initially detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) before the children are sent to HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and parents to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. Each entity plays a role in reunification.  This process is well coordinated.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

  • CBP has reunited 522 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) in their custody who were separated from adults as part of the Zero Tolerance initiative.  The reunions of an additional 16 UAC who were scheduled to be reunited on June 22, 2018 were delayed due to weather affecting travel and we expect they will all be reunited with their parents within the next 24 hours.  There will be a small number of children who were separated for reasons other than zero tolerance that will remain separated: generally only if the familial relationship cannot be confirmed, we believe the adult is a threat to the safety of the child, or the adult is a criminal alien.
  • Because of the speed in which adults completed their criminal proceedings, some children were still present at a United States Border Patrol (USBP) station at the time their parent(s) returned from court proceedings.  In these cases, the USBP reunited the family and transferred them, together, to ICE custody as a family unit.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

  • ICE has dedicated the Port Isabel Service Processing Center exit disclaimer icon as the primary family reunification and removal center for adults in their custody.
  • A parent who is ordered removed from the U.S. may request that his or her minor child accompany them. It should be noted that in the past many parents have elected to be removed without their children.
  • ICE has posted information in all of its facilities advising detained parents who are trying to locate, and/or communicate with, a child in the custody of HHS to call the Detention Reporting and Information Line for assistance, which is staffed by live operators Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 8 PM.
  • The information provided by these parents to the call operators will be forwarded to HHS for action. ICE and HHS will coordinate a review of their custodial data to identify where each child is located, verify the parent/child relationship, and set up regular communication and removal coordination, if necessary.
  • Each ICE Field Office has Juvenile Coordinators who manage these cases throughout the immigration court proceedings.
  • Further, ICE maintains a publicly available online detainee locator which can be used to locate adults detained by ICE. This site can be accessed at: https://locator.ice.gov/odls/#/index exit disclaimer icon

ICE has completed the following steps toward reunification:

  • Implemented an identification mechanism to ensure on-going tracking of linked family members throughout the detention and removal process;
  • Designated detention locations for separated parents and will enhance current processes to ensure communication with children in HHS custody;
  • Worked closely with foreign consulates to ensure that travel documents are issued for both the parent and child at time of removal; and
  • Coordinated with HHS for the reuniting of the child prior to the parents’ departure from the United States.

U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement

  • Minors come into HHS custody with information provided by DHS regarding how they illegally entered the country and whether or not they were with a parent or adult and, to the extent possible, the parent(s) or guardian(s) information and location. There is a central database which HHS and DHS can access and update when a parent(s) or minor(s) location information changes.
  • As of June 20th HHS has 2,053 separated minors being cared for in HHS funded facilities, and is working with relevant agency partners to foster communications and work towards reuniting every minor and every parent or guardian via well-established reunification processes. Currently only 17% of minors in HHS funded facilities were placed there as a result of Zero Tolerance enforcement, and the remaining 83% percent arrived to the United States without a parent or guardian.
  • Parent(s) or guardian(s) attempting to determine if their child is in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in HHS Administration for Children and Families should contact the ORR National Call Center (www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/resource/orr-national-call-center) at 1-800-203-7001, or via email information@ORRNCC.com. Information will be collected and sent to HHS funded facility where minor is located. The ORR National Call Center has numerous resources available for children, parent(s), guardian(s) and sponsors.
  • Within 24 hours of arriving at an HHS funded facility minors are given the opportunity to communicate with a vetted parent, guardian or relative. While in HHS funded facilities’ care, every effort is made to ensure minors are able to communicate (either telephonic or video depending on the circumstances) with their parent or guardian (at least twice per week). However, reasonable safety precautions are in place to ensure that an adult wishing to communicate with a minor is in fact that minor’s parent or guardian.
  • Minors in HHS funded facilities are permitted to call both family members and/or sponsors living in the United States and abroad. Attorneys representing minors have unlimited telephone access and the minor may speak to other appropriate stakeholders, such as their consulate, the case coordinator, or child advocate. Additional information on telephone calls, visitation, and mail policies are available in the policy guide.
  • Under HHS’ publicly available policy guide for Unaccompanied Alien Children, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) releases minors to sponsors in the following order of preference: parent; legal guardian; an adult relative (brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandparent or first cousin); an adult individual or entity designated by the parent or legal guardian (through a signed declaration or other document that ORR determines is sufficient to establish the signatory’s parental/guardian relationship); a licensed program willing to accept legal custody; or an adult individual or entity seeking custody when it appears that there is no other likely alternative to long term ORR care and custody.
Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other news materials are available at https://www.hhs.gov/news.
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Last revised: June 23, 2018
This entry was posted in Government, Refugees & Aliens, Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

9 Responses to Zero-Tolerance Prosecution and Family Reunification

  1. I did not mean to post anymore today because I have a ton of work to catch up on, but this brings up something that is important, and I don’t know what can be done about it.

    For example in relation to Stella’s post above, in one particular situation various “news media” have reported “It has become common knowledge that General Dynamics does business with the child concentration camps that are housing babies, toddlers and children of asylum seekers detained at the U.S. border,” referring to a job advertisement for a lead call specialist. https://bangordailynews.com/2018/06/19/business/maine-shipyards-owner-takes-heat-for-work-with-program-that-detains-migrant-children/
    Well if you read the entire job advert, and what the ORR call center is, you would see they: 1. Have a call number for children who feel threatened or at risk, 2. Have the number so parents can call to be reunited with children, 3. Have the information technology system to keep track of the children’s medical needs/records – and for that General Dynamics is evil!!! How do they expect to care for these children, and reunite parent and child without this!!! You should read what is in this and other articles, and the comments of these willfully ignorant useful idiots.

    The article did include this statement and link by General Dynamics: Tuesday General Dynamics confirmed that the company “has provided support to unaccompanied minors through its work with the office of Refugee Resettlement, a part of the Department of Health and Human Services, since 2000. This includes casework support services to help ensure special needs of unaccompanied children are met, including medical requirements, and to facilitate family reunification, only after children are under the care of Health and Human Services,” the statement continued. But the company said, “General Dynamics Information Technology has no role in the family separation policy, nor a role in the construction or operation of detention facilities.” On Tuesday afternoon, General Dynamics IT posted a graphic on Twitter in an attempt to emphasize that the company does not operate detention facilities or play a role in separating children from their parents.
    Get the Facts: What we do and what we don’t do in support of unaccompanied children:

    But the facts don’t matter to these mindless lunatics, which brings me back to a question I had a day or so ago: How do you deal with millions of people who have been trained to be be hysterical, ignore facts, print lies, and feel they have the right to verbally abuse and/or attack (both physically and “lawfare”) those who disagree with them – basically by definition either sociopaths, or psychopaths depending on behavior – because that is what the opposition is.

    Like

    • stella says:

      The more sunlight we can provide – fact-based information – the better! Most of the people who are shouting the loudest about these evil policies really don’t know, or they are listening to others who are also ignorant, or are deliberately distorting the facts. I have posted as much as I can on social media to educate those who are open to education. There is nothing we can do about those who refuse to see and hear.

      Like

  2. czarowniczy says:

    And the frog simmers on.
    OK, they’ve got the kids reunited wityh their parents and drawn attention away from the idea of ‘how are we going to absorb millions of immigrants who don’t speak the language and largely lack skills?’. The folks who were on the fence are hit with a tsunami of emotional reporting about how these illegals’ children are being tortured by the Administration, the focus of the response to the illegalissue is changed from the fiscal and physical realities of dealing with them to the emotional one of thousands of Dondi faces begging for their parents.
    Now it’s going to change to taking these thousands and thousands of illegal immigrant families and using that emotional aura the plotters have created to grant them forgiveness and permanent residence here. The threat of untold thousands of suits against the government and/or selected officials for the separations could be another option or part of a single massive assault to clog the courts and keep the illegals here until each case is decided – likely past the 2020 elections.
    Having more than enough experience with Latin America I keep seeing a future US as a giant Switzerland where livestock wander in the street, broiled chicken is sold from oil drum grills and you need to speak three or more languages to cunduct basic business. OK, not immediately, I’ll bet we go thru spates of regression to end up something like a larger version of Brazil but then I’m wqhite, over 40, conservative and irrelevant to the internationalist’s plans for a kinder and gentler America.

    Like

    • stella says:

      I concentrate on what I can do to educate. I am taking the time to uncover the facts and share them with as many people as I can – here, at Facebook, and on Twitter.

      The policy to detain ALL illegal aliens will eventually have the desired effect – that is, discourage many in Mexico who believe that crossing the border illegally (particularly with children) is a good idea.

      More needs to be done, of course – better border security of all kinds, strict consideration of asylum and refugee applications, mandatory use of e-verify by employers, with huge fines for non-compliance, and raids on companies that use illegal alien employees.

      In the meantime, we can only do what is possible. Either that, or continue to increase grants for housing alien children every year, as has been done for the past several years.

      Liked by 1 person

      • czarowniczy says:

        The agenda to turn both Europe and the US into non-European melting pots to achieve the death of the ‘warring European ethos’ has been steadily going on since the end of WWII. The engineers devote ther lives and fortunes to creating a world of’inclusiveness’ with, of course, an enlightened benign leadership. Afterv all, democracy has run its course and now the world’s become too complex for mere breathers to determine policy, only those whose sole job is to see the big picture can effectively govern.
        I’ll say it again, I’m hoping that – as with Vietnam- some 17 years of war has created a large pool of military vets who’ll be the core of future conservativism. Those who’ve actually agreeed in writing to die for their country and have seen the poolitical perfidy that is aligned with our enemies’ best interests and againt the nation’s generally don’t by the liberal/prog/internationalist BS. We’re fading out, it’s their turn and responsibility.

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  3. Lucille says:

    The international and domestic Left is very gifted at causing their opposition to despair. They keep pounding away at this “immigration” issue, lying and paying others to lie, and then the right falls into a funk, doing nothing except whine.

    Stella and others are online doing what’s necessary…informing, questioning, refuting. We’re encouraging people to get out the vote, and vote ourselves. We pray. We send letters to our elected officials. We put signs in our windows, on our lawns and bumpers. We send monies. We support those who are telling the truth, whether that’s in the print world, or the cable/network world. We don’t quit.

    What else can we do? I’d say that’s a heck of a lot already, but if anyone has more suggestions, by all means let’s include them and let everyone on the right know about it.

    Liked by 2 people

    • czarowniczy says:

      Not a helluva lot we can do, we jes don’t have the power. I’m just digging in, hunkering down and adopting a defensive position until I see how things are shaking out.
      This ‘illrgal immigration’ issue has been a Leftist/progressive program they’ver been pushing for decades – the ‘Mexican’ population in the western states didn’t spring up in the last eight years, it’s been a heavy and steady leak for decades. We had illegal Mexicans working in the small Utah town I lived in during the very early 70s and I’m sure they were there before then.
      At some point enough of the b;lack Democrats are going to wake up and realize their shepherds are importing a new group to displace them. They’ll turn and join the people who are fighting this dilution of America – OK, some will but not all – and let’s hope it’s not too late by then.

      Like

  4. czarowniczy says:

    And how many homeless American families are sleeping in cars or out on the street tonight and would berg for accom odations we are paying to put these felonous foreign families into? US citizen dad commits a felony his family and kids are ripped away from him and forced to fend for themselves while foreign felony dad gets to have himself and his entire felonious family set up in style.

    Like

  5. stella says:

    What was going on during the Obama administration. Explains why more strict rules were passed regarding handling of unaccompanied alien minors.

    Frontline: Trafficked in America

    https://www.pbs.org/video/trafficked-in-america-pppgmt/

    Like

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