Many mistakes and unfortunate circumstances have created the border crisis. One of the mistakes, which Congress could fix easily, was the 2002 decision to give the Department of Health and Human Services authority over unaccompanied minors. Congress should hand this task — which, these days, is a complex, large-scale logistics operation — over to the Department of Homeland Security.
When our border patrol catches Mexican teenagers trying to enter illegally, we often can just turn them away. When the teenagers are from Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador, all more than 1,000 miles south of the U.S. border, simply turning them back is perilous.
This is why the Trump administration cut deals with Mexico, requiring the Mexican government to take care of unaccompanied minors and families. But it’s also why the U.S. government arranges housing for unaccompanied minors who arrive at our border without documentation.
Two U.S. agencies are involved in the process of apprehending, housing, and returning undocumented teenagers: Homeland Security and HHS.
Homeland Security is the police. HHS is the foster home.
Only for the first 72 hours is Homeland Security supposed to hold minors at the border. These facilities — called “cages” when former President Donald Trump was in office, now referred to as anything but that — are not nice and not intended for long-term housing or detention. If in three days the children cannot be safely sent back to family, that’s when HHS is supposed to take over. Specifically, the Office of Refugee Resettlement takes responsibility for the children and teenagers.
There’s a logic to this arrangement, which immigration advocates helped craft. Border patrol and immigration enforcement used to be housed in the Justice Department’s Immigration and Nationalization Service, back before DHS was created in the aftermath of 9/11. When immigration, customs, and naturalization functions were moved to DHS, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein successfully worked to move the detention of undocumented teenagers into HHS.
“It means kids will receive better treatment,” a refugee advocate said at the time. Moving unaccompanied minors from the care of law enforcement to the care of “human services” meant “no longer have their prosecutor serve as their caretaker,” supporters cheered.
And, in ordinary times, this arrangement probably works well. A few children are sent to a home run by Lutherans in Texas. A nun in Pittsburgh takes in a few more. But this doesn’t work in crisis times.
Currently, about 18,000 unaccompanied minors are in U.S. government custody, and nearly 6,000 of them in DHS’s border “cages.” The reason: HHS lacks the capacity to take the children off the hands of DHS. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, part of DHS, is already getting involved, helping HHS turn convention centers into temporary housing. But this highlights why maybe HHS shouldn’t be in charge of housing anyone apprehended at the border.
HHS is a social work agency and not an operations agency. The military-like nature of DHS and the operations expertise of FEMA would actually be more humane here.
The Biden administration has caused this current surge, and it should end it by reversing course and restoring Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy.
Every time the U.S. creates incentives for undocumented children to come, a wave of undocumented children shows up, putting their lives in danger. These waves overwhelm HHS. Congress should consider building an infrastructure for unaccompanied minors that can expand and contract rapidly — and that probably isn’t a child welfare division in HHS.
