The Biden administration plans to send up to 500 employees from the Department of Agriculture to the southern border, where they will help overwhelmed federal law enforcement find adults to whom unaccompanied children will be released.
“The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is partnering with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to support the federal government’s urgent efforts to care for and place Unaccompanied Children who have entered the U.S. via the southern border,” a USDA spokesman wrote in an email to the Washington Examiner. “HHS is seeking interested candidates to serve from two weeks up to 120 days for a voluntary deployment detail as part of the effort.”
The department asked employees in an internal email sent April 22 to volunteer to assist interviewing and handling children who come across the United States-Mexico border without parents, according to a report from the Spectator. USDA has no role in immigration or border affairs, and the request is extremely unusual, especially as the White House insists that the border is not in a state of “crisis” but is soliciting help from workers who have no training or experience in social work or child services.
The surge of Central American children coming across the southern border began in February, after President Joe Biden chose to stop immediately turning away unaccompanied children, a policy the Trump administration adopted in March 2020 to avoid filling Border Patrol stations with people amid the coronavirus pandemic. Under a federal anti-trafficking law, children from Central America are supposed to be taken into custody and given the opportunity to seek humanitarian protection before being returned home.
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“These are children in need and government employees now have an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of these children, families and communities impacted by this migration,” acting USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service Chief Terry Cosby wrote. “I urge you to seriously consider answering this call to service to make a difference.”
The 500 USDA employees will aid HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, which holds children for approximately one month while it looks for a family member in the U.S.
Despite not having any medicinal or psychological training, some volunteers may interview the children about their experiences traveling to the border.
“Support personnel should not expect formal, classroom-based training classes up front as the need for help is immediate,” an HHS document states, adding that children may “have experienced very difficult, sad, or scary things while they were in their home country or on the journey to the United States, including gang violence, sexual abuse, domestic violence, physical abuse, being separated for a long time from parents, and witnessing the death or suffering of people they love.”
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The deployments may take up as many as 12 hours per day. Some volunteers may have to continue doing their normal duties while assisting HHS in Dallas, San Diego, San Antonio, and Fort Bliss.
