Senator Padilla wants to raise the standard of care for migrant children

Officials send letter asking to raise standard of care

WASHINGTON, D.C. (KYMA, KECY) - U.S. Senator Alex Padilla joins Senator Jeff Merkley in urging President Biden to change the standard of care for migrant children in U.S. custody.

President Biden is keeping the standard of care left over from the Trump Administration, where unaccompanied noncitizen children are placed in shelters while waiting for the asylum process.

There has been less room to keep migrants in these shelters, so the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) has been housing children in Emergency Intake Sites, which have been found to often violate the Flores settlement agreement.

Migrants have a limited time to be placed in unlicensed shelters such as the Emergency Intake Sites.

The Biden administration is looking to give the ORR emergency funding and alongside that, naturally raise the standard of care.

Several senators and officials have wrote to the ORR stating, "ORR’s reliance on unlicensed influx facilities or Emergency Intake Sites (EISs) over the last several months reflects a long-term failure to invest in high quality care for non-citizen children."

These officials are asking for the ORR to comply with the Flores Settlement Agreement, as well as asking that no children should stay in an Influx Care Facility or Emergency Intake Site for more than 30 days.

"ORR must commit to a credible plan to shut down all EISs as quickly as possible, and to not reopening similar unlicensed facilities even in response to high numbers of new unaccompanied child referrals by building a network of care providers that is resilient to large and small fluctuations in arrivals, improving case management in both quality of care and time-to-release, and by creating actionable contingency plans that ensure quality of care for children even during large numbers of arrivals.”