WASHINGTON -- A Health and Human Services Department official insisted that the agency is not responsible for ensuring the safety of unaccompanied migrant children once they leave its care -- and pleaded with senators on Thursday not to force it to take on the responsibility.
"Please don't make us a law enforcement agency," said Jonathan White, testifying on behalf of the department at a hearing held by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs subcommittee on investigations.
White, a career government official and commander in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, bore the brunt of the questioning from visibly frustrated senators who at times raised their voices at him, only to later apologize for their harsh tone.
Although White was joined on the panel by witnesses from the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, the senators' attention was primarily on him. Children who cross the U.S.-Mexico border without an adult are placed in government-run shelters overseen by the Health and Human Services Department. But after they are turned over to the care of an adult sponsor, there is no formal government system in place to ensure their welfare or safety.
The subcommittee's chairman, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Tom Carper of Delaware, the ranking Democrat, released a report Wednesday detailing ways in which they believe the Health and Human Services Department, and the federal government more broadly, has failed to protect these children. At the hearing, the senators said they are considering legislation that would require the agency to take on a greater role in ensuring the well-being of minors after they leave the shelters.
Yet by the end of the hearing, the senators and White were no closer to an agreement on how -- or even if -- these children should be monitored when they're no longer physically in the government's custody.
"We have neither the authorities nor the appropriations to exercise that degree of oversight after minors exit [government] care," White told the senators.
"As you know Commander White, this is where we have a difference of opinion," said Portman. "We believe Congress has given you that authority. And by the way if you don't, who does?"
This debate began during President Barack Obama's administration when an influx of children traveling without their parents overwhelmed resources and drew sharp attention to the government's handling of the kids. During that time, it was learned that the Health and Human Services Department had turned eight children over to human traffickers in Ohio, so senators began asking why no one in the government was accountable for knowing the children's whereabouts.
The problem has only gotten worse, Portman and Carper said in their report, since President Donald Trump's administration began its now-ended policy of family separations at the border -- sending even more children to overcrowded government shelters.
In 2015, the agency agreed to attempt to contact children or their sponsors 30 days after they leave the shelters. But if they cannot be reached, there is no further action required of the agency.
This April, the agency revealed that of the more than 7,000 calls made to sponsors over three months in 2017, officials couldn't contact nearly 1,500 children. At the hearing, Portman asked White for similar data from 2018. White assured him he'd get those numbers in the next two weeks.
Separately, the California Supreme Court on Thursday made it easier for some children who are abused or abandoned by a parent to seek a U.S. visa to avoid deportation. It was not immediately clear how many children the ruling would affect.
State judges cannot require that children drag an absentee parent living abroad into court in their visa application process, the justices said in a unanimous decision. Immigration-rights advocates had warned that such a requirement would make it nearly impossible for the children to fight deportation. That's because courts in California cannot establish authority over a foreign citizen and the parent may want nothing to do with a child claiming abuse, and would refuse to participate in a court proceeding in the U.S., immigration groups said in court documents.
The ruling overturned a lower court decision. The California Supreme Court said it was sufficient to adequately notify the absent parent of the court proceedings, but that parent did not have to be a party to the case.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in court documents that the case had implications for a "substantial portion" of the thousands of children who have fled to the U.S. from Central America and Mexico and settled in California.
Information for this article was contributed by Colby Itkowitz of The Washington Post; and by Sudhin Thanawala of The Associated Press.
A Section on 08/17/2018