US interest in promoting migrant children soars as COVID fears abate | Migration news

As a registration number of children fled violence from Central America and crossed the Mexican border alone this spring, most sent to large-scale emergency shelters that the Biden administration quickly opened its doors to military bases, convention centers and fairgrounds across the United States.

Transitional foster homes, where families are allowed to take care of migrant children, are widely regarded as the best option for children in US custody, especially for minors who are traumatized, very young, pregnant or teenage parents and requiring additional emotional support.

Suppliers say that in recent months, interest in welcoming migrant children has been booming, with Americans getting vaccinated against the coronavirus and virus-related restrictions on daily life being lifted. They are urging the government to place more children in foster homes.

In May, more than 22,000 migrant children were in the care of the US government, as the United States grappled with the largest number of migrants arriving at its southern border in 21 years.

Chris and Kristen Umphlett and their children, left to right, Derek 7, Elsie, 3, Kyria, 9, and Hudson, 5, at their home in East Lansing, Michigan, USA [Al Goldis/AP Photo]

Chris Umphlett and his family hosted a 12-year-old Honduran girl for a month in their Michigan home, while US officials contacted and checked her mother, who lives in Texas. She barely spoke a word when she arrived after crossing the Mexican border on her own.

The couple and their four young children, who live in the town of East Lansing, invited her for walks and bike rides and watched Disney movies with Spanish subtitles. A Honduran woman from their church cooked a homemade Honduran meal of meat, kidney beans and leches cake, which brought a smile to the face.

“I imagine its first introduction to the United States was probably not very friendly, was probably confusing,” said Umphlett, 37, who works for a software company. “We tried to give him a better experience.”

Although there are not yet enough approved families to accommodate the thousands of children in Guard in the United States, advocates say the shelters could accommodate many children under 12 and other vulnerable young people, such as pregnant teens, now in unauthorized government shelters. At the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona last week, there were some 300 children under the age of 12 among the nearly 1,400 minors housed.

The psychological and emotional risk prejudice The older the children are in shelters, according to a case filed in federal court on June 22 by lawyers overseeing the care of minors detained in the United States as part of a long-standing court settlement.

At the end of May, when around 500 transitional foster home beds were unoccupied, there were 5 and 6-year-old children who had spent more than a month in shelters, according to the court record.

“What a child receives at a shelter will never be compared to the love of a parent caring for a child,” said Kayla Park of Samaritas, the provider who connects the Umphlett family with the migrant children. “They can put them to bed at night or maybe the kids in the family play with them. This kind of human interaction is so necessary and cannot be replicated in a shelter.

A migrant family from Ecuador resting by the river while waiting to be escorted by the US Border Patrol after crossing the Rio Grande River into the United States from Mexico in Roma, Texas [Go Nakamura/Reuters]

President Joe Biden’s administration has said it’s not just about filling beds. Some siblings might need to travel to a shelter to stay together or to have space to self-quarantine if someone tests positive for the coronavirus, so leaving beds unoccupied is necessary to cope with the circumstances. who are showing up, the US Secretary of Health and Human Services said. Xavier Becerra told reporters last week.

“You take a hit trying to fully maximize your space,” Becerra said when asked about unoccupied allowed beds after visiting a shelter that houses 800 children at the Fort Bliss military base near El Paso, Texas and that has been plagued by complaints.

Providers agree that foster care is more complicated for placements because age and gender must be taken into account, especially in homes where migrant children may share a room with children. family, as in the Umphlett Home, which only accepts girls 12 and younger.

And the pandemic has restricted things further. Many families did not want to take a child directly to the border for fear of being exposed to the coronavirus.

Other families were not equipped to accommodate someone while they worked at home with children doing virtual learning, such as the Umphletts, who did not take in anyone until March of this year.

But providers, such as the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, are seeing a dramatic increase in the number of families interested in welcoming migrant children, providing an opportunity to be seized, said its director, Krish O’Mara Vignarajah.

“I really believe that if we invest and focus on building this network of prospective foster parents, these homes can and should be the medium to long term solution so that we don’t have to depend on the facilities of influx in the future, ”she said.