All kids have been removed from the Homestead prison camp in Florida, but concerns remain

The Department of Health and Human Services said this past weekend that all remaining kids jailed at the unlicensed prison camp for migrant children in Homestead, Florida, have either been released to sponsors or moved to a state-licensed facility—“and they’re not coming back, two federal sources confirmed,” the Miami Herald reports.

“From reducing the number of children held at Homestead to forcing the administration to produce a hurricane plan, I’m glad that our community’s persistent advocacy brought about real results,” said Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who has been a leading advocate for these kids. “However, I still have many questions about where these children are being sent to and the conditions they’ll be kept in. They shouldn’t be sent to another detention facility—they must be reunited with family or placed with a sponsor.”

Agreed. While the emptying of Homestead is welcome news, children do not belong in any detention, period, and that includes new locations that kids have been shuffled to from Homestead. Continuing to prolong the detention of children will also leave them at risk of being detained by ICE when they turn 18, like “Sofia.” She spent over 80 days at Homestead, until she was shackled on her 18th birthday and sent to an adult detention center. “It made me feel really bad because it made me feel like a criminal when I hadn’t done anything,” she said.

Half of the nearly 800 children who had recently remained jailed at Homestead were 17, with many just days or weeks away from turning 18. How many of these teens were released to family members or sponsors? How many were transferred to a new facility, and are now terrifyingly close to facing the same fate as Sofia? “The children at the Homestead Detention Center are gone. But so many questions remain,” the Miami Herald editorial board said. 

Like Mucarsel-Powell, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said she will demand answers on how kids were moved in such a quick manner after so many were jailed for so long, saying she “will seek a full accounting of where these hundreds of children who were reportedly relocated from the Homestead detention center ended up.” Advocates such as Thomas Kennedy of Florida Immigrant Coalition also express concern over teens at risk of ICE detention, saying that “we need transparency on where these kids are being transferred, we need to make sure that the 17-year-olds aren’t sent to adult detention to await deportation.”

What’s also clear is that the public must remain engaged in pushing for an end to the inhumane treatment of migrant children, because the fight is not over. While a plan to reuse a World War II-era internment camp in Oklahoma to jail migrant children appears to be dead, the Trump administration is reportedly looking for permanent locations in California, Florida, and Virginia to use as future baby jails next year. “No,” tweeted state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani last week. “We should be closing camps, not opening new ones.”

from Daily Kos https://ift.tt/2GMpixG