The burgeoning population of detained migrant children in America is causing a shift in funding away from medical programs, Yahoo News reports. There are currently 13,312 children, a record number already substantially higher than the 12,800 reported last week. Most of these detained children crossed the border without their family. Normally, these children would be reunited with American relatives as quickly as possible. But stricter rules for allowing this reunification imposed by the Trump administration and a more pervasive atmosphere of fear have created a bottleneck that is slowing down family reconnection.
These ballooning numbers are straining the shelter system to capacity and leading the administration to construct tent cities in Texas. A letter from Health and Human Services Alex Azar to Washington State Senator Patty Murray, explains that a significant chunk of funds will come from slashing other services, including treatment for AIDS patients and cancer research. Other funds will be taken from the Office of Refugee Resettlement or ORR (in keeping with the administration’s policy of radically reducing the number of refugees America accepts).
As Yahoo News recounts:
Nearly $80 million of that money will come from other refugee support programs within ORR, which have seen their needs significantly diminished as the Trump administration makes drastic cuts to the annual refugee numbers. The rest is being taken from other programs, including $16.7 million from Head Start, $5.7 million from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program and $13.3 million from the National Cancer Institute. Money is also being diverted from programs dedicated to mental and maternal health, women’s shelters and substance abuse.
Aside from the costs, the underlying policy shift is keeping children detained longer and also, when they are released, putting them in the care of distant American relatives who are documented as against closer relatives who might be undocumented. Abigail Trillin of Legal Services for Children notes, “We’re starting to see undocumented folks not going to come forward, therefore children either stay in detention or go to more distant people who might happen to be documented.” She adds that this “situation that is at best challenging and at worst dangerous for children.”