MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Government sources say that for the last six weeks, they've been ordered not to release undocumented children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone to join their parents and relatives. Now, officially, the Trump administration says it has not issued a moratorium on those releases, but around the country, attorneys also say they are not seeing children being reunited with families. Advocates warned that the longer kids stay in detention, the worse it is for their health and safety. Reporter Mark Betancourt with the California Newsroom has been following this. Hi, Mark.
MARK BETANCOURT: Hi.
KELLY: Start with the kids. Who are they? Why are they in federal custody to begin with?
BETANCOURT: So these are kids who are under 18, from toddlers to teenagers, who cross the border without a parent or guardian. And when they're apprehended by immigration officials, they're handed over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, which generally puts them in group shelters. There are about 2,400 kids in shelters across the country right now. And most of these kids actually came to the U.S. to join their parents or other family members. In the immigration system, these adults are called sponsors, and they have to be vetted by the government to make sure they are who they say they are and that they're safe for the kids to be released to.
KELLY: But that is not happening. Children aren't being released to their sponsors.
BETANCOURT: That's right. So a federal field specialist, an ORR staff member whose job it is to sign off on releases, told me that in early November, they were given a verbal order by their supervisor to halt all releases to sponsors, even those who had cleared this vetting process. This person spoke to NPR only on the condition of anonymity because they feared they'll be fired for speaking out. But two other ORR officials also said they were aware of the order.
I also talked to eight immigration attorneys across the country in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Miami, Charlotte, Washington, D.C., and they all told me they're seeing the same thing with the kids they represent. They're not getting released to sponsors. And they all said, this is not normal.
KELLY: So what is going on?
BETANCOURT: Well, I obtained some recent ORR data on these releases, and in the month of October, before this apparent moratorium, the government was releasing about four kids per day to sponsors. That's a little over 100 kids for the month. But over the last month and a half, they've released only four kids total to sponsors. Now, no one I've spoken to knew why those kids got out and no one else.
What we have known for a while is that the Trump administration has added these new vetting requirements for sponsors, like DNA testing for family members and fingerprinting all the adults in the household where the kid's going to be living. That has really slowed down the process over the last few months, but this virtual halt in releases is new. The people I spoke with both inside and outside ORR say they've never seen reunifications just stop across the board like this.
KELLY: So we've been talking through your reporting, what you have learned about what is happening. Do we know why?
BETANCOURT: Well, first of all, the Administration of Children and Families (ph), which oversees ORR, sent me an email saying the office, quote, "has not issued a moratorium on sponsor releases." They also referred to those, quote, "enhanced vetting policies" that I just mentioned, but they did not explain why most releases have just stopped cold.
Now, the attorneys I spoke with said this hold on releases has really been taking a toll on kids, and also that all this pressure - first, the drawn out vetting process, and now being told, look, you're not going to leave federal custody anytime soon, and we don't know why - is making some kids reconsider whether it's worth trying to stay in the U.S. And the attorneys told me that they're saying that more and more of these kids are deciding it's not worth it, and instead they're just choosing to leave the country.
KELLY: Mark Betancourt, freelance reporter with the California Newsroom. Thank you.
BETANCOURT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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