NYC Foster Leader Receiving Migrant Kids Orphaned By Trump: 'There Doesn't Seem To Be A Method'
Source: Gothamist
On Wednesday, two leaders of those organizations spoke with Gothamist, on the condition of anonymity because contractees are prohibited from talking to press. Both sources stressed that the foster services were working toward the children's best interests, and that they were aghast at the federal government’s decision to take children from their parents.
The system they describe begins within 72 hours of ICE separating a family, at which point the unaccompanied children are legally required to be transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The federal agency then places the kids with one of the contracted foster groups—in some cases, thousands of miles away from their detained parents, who may have no way of contacting them and no connection to the region.
"In theory, you would think that the government would be sending kids to New York who might have a sponsor in the northeast, but that's not always how it works," one source told Gothamist. "There doesn't seem to be a method for this. We get a phone call from ORR and they say, 'Hey, we're arriving at JFK. We have three kids with us.'"
The children in the agency's care who've been separated from their parents under the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy are between the ages of 6 and 17, that source said. Most of their parents are detained near the U.S.-Mexico border, and one of the organization's first priorities is figuring out which detention center they're in, so the kids can speak to them by phone. So far, they've had only "a tiny bit of success" in finding numbers for the young children to call.
Read more: http://gothamist.com/2018/06/20/nyc_foster_care_migrant.php
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