Time
for a bit of background. The trouble we're having now is really two
problems coming together: an increase in the number of children from
Central America making this journey, and a system that doesn't have the
resources to handle them once they get here. A number of conditions are
combining to create the former: desperate poverty and violence in the
three countries most of these kids are coming from (Guatemala, El
Salvador, and Honduras), false rumors that children who come today will
get to stay under the administration's Deferred Action For Childhood
Arrivals policy (which actually only applies to
people who came to the US before June 2007), and the more accurate
belief that if you make it to the US you might get to stay anyway, at
least for a while until your deportation hearing.
for a bit of background. The trouble we're having now is really two
problems coming together: an increase in the number of children from
Central America making this journey, and a system that doesn't have the
resources to handle them once they get here. A number of conditions are
combining to create the former: desperate poverty and violence in the
three countries most of these kids are coming from (Guatemala, El
Salvador, and Honduras), false rumors that children who come today will
get to stay under the administration's Deferred Action For Childhood
Arrivals policy (which actually only applies to
people who came to the US before June 2007), and the more accurate
belief that if you make it to the US you might get to stay anyway, at
least for a while until your deportation hearing.
And that's the second part: because of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act—a
law passed in 2008 with the support of many Republicans (it was named
for a 19th century British evangelical abolitionist) and signed by
President George W. Bush—children stopped at the border can't just be
shoved on a bus back home. They have to be given a deportation hearing,
and until that hearing occurs, the law says the child must be "promptly
placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of
the child." The law also says that "[a] child shall not be placed in a
secure facility absent a determination that the child poses a danger to
self or others or has been charged with having committed a criminal
offense." In other words, we can't just lock them up, and if they have
some family in the U.S., placing the minor with them is going to be "the
least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child."
law passed in 2008 with the support of many Republicans (it was named
for a 19th century British evangelical abolitionist) and signed by
President George W. Bush—children stopped at the border can't just be
shoved on a bus back home. They have to be given a deportation hearing,
and until that hearing occurs, the law says the child must be "promptly
placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of
the child." The law also says that "[a] child shall not be placed in a
secure facility absent a determination that the child poses a danger to
self or others or has been charged with having committed a criminal
offense." In other words, we can't just lock them up, and if they have
some family in the U.S., placing the minor with them is going to be "the
least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child."