WASHINGTON, DC – Today, at a briefing on Capitol Hill, experts and key Members of Congress discussed the unintended consequences of immigration enforcement on children and families. Too often, current enforcement activities result in unnecessary harm to children, families and communities. Parents who are detained are separated from their children, sometimes permanently, at great cost to the family’s well-being and the community.
Panelists, which included Representative Lynn C. Woolsey (D-CA), and Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA), discussed the hundreds of thousands of children, including U.S. citizen children, who are suffering from immigration enforcement and detention policies that separate children from their families. In addition, legislative solutions to this problem were discussed.
“The ramifications of our broken immigration policies are evident every day. Innocent children are needlessly separated from their parents due to their parent’s detention or deportation, and some are unnecessarily ending up in the child welfare system due to their parent’s inability to make child care arrangements,” said Bruce Lesley, President of First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization that cosponsored the briefing. “Family separation is detrimental to both the physical, social, and mental health of any child. Thus, Congress must change our immigration enforcement policies to make detention conditions humane, consider family well-being, and avoid placing children into the child welfare system unnecessarily. Ultimately, we need to ensure the well-being of these vulnerable children and keep families together whenever possible.”
Experts also touched on two new pieces of legislation that provide critical safeguards to protect children and ensure family unity.
First, the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections (HELP) for Separated Children Act, (H.R.3531) would provide critical, nationwide protocols to protect the rights of vulnerable populations and address the unique needs of children during immigration enforcement procedures. Introduced by Rep. Woolsey, the Act would help keep children with their parents/caregivers and out of the foster care system while their parents’/caregiver’s case is pending by ensuring that vulnerable populations apprehended during immigration enforcement activities are identified, treated with dignity and released or placed into alternatives to detention programs.
Additionally, the Immigration Oversight and Fairness Act (H.R. 1215) would create protections for vulnerable populations, including unaccompanied immigrant children and women, and create legally enforceable detention standards that will ensure dignity and safety of immigration detainees and protect their due process rights. Rep. Roybal-Allard introduced the measure, which will improve general protections for this vulnerable group, enhance training for DHS officials to ensure they treat children properly and facilitate the speedy transfer of children to better-equipped shelter facilities.