THE IMPACT OF LIMITED CONTACT WITH PARENTS ON UNACCOMPANIED IMMIGRANT CHILDREN
For years, unaccompanied immigrant children in federal government custody have only been guaranteed two telephone calls per week, 10 minutes each, to family members. As a result, many children in custody are permitted very limited contact with family, regardless of the child’s age, individual needs, difficulty in adjusting to the conditions of custody, or trauma caused by separation from family. These restrictions are harmful to children and contravened by pediatric and child health experts, who have recognized both the long-term harm and trauma of family separation and the vital importance of the presence of a loving parent or caregiver to the health and wellbeing of children. For many children, 20 minutes a week is inadequate to receive the support they need and to maintain or develop stable relationships with parents or caregivers while they are in custody. Indeed, children in custody have repeatedly and explicitly expressed their desire and need to have more contact with family.
This report addresses this longstanding issue and explains why the government’s restriction on child contact with family is not in the best interests of children. We call on the federal government to reform its policies to ensure that children in custody are able to have necessary, regular contact with parents and caregivers to advance their health and to mitigate the harm of family separation and prolonged stays.
Specifically, we make the following recommendations:
• Children should have unlimited access to telephone and video calls with all persons that are included in their approved list of telephone contacts. If the government is unable to provide children with unlimited access to calls, then it should provide each child with, at a minimum, 30 minutes of phone time each day with parents, caregivers, and family members.
• Children should be permitted to make video calls with family members whenever video calls are feasible and would be beneficial to the child.
• Children should have regular in-person visits with parents and caregivers whenever possible, including in the case of children whose parents or caregivers are being held in immigration detention. The government’s restriction on children’s contact with parents, family, and caregivers grossly fails to align with its child welfare mandate and its goal to provide individualized, trauma-informed care that promotes children’s health and wellbeing, during the time unaccompanied children are in its custody. Often, SIRs are written up for behavioral incidents that could likely have been avoided with the implementation of effective crisis prevention and de-escalation techniques tailored to the unique needs and challenges of the child. But rather than encourage de-escalation and conflict resolution, SIRs may lead to a call to local police and, in some cases, the arrest of children. These arrests can have severe, long-term consequences for children and can significantly harm their immigration cases.
“They would punish us a lot. We would
cry because they only allowed us to
talk [on the phone] to our family for ten
minutes. That would frustrate us and we would talk back to the staff. We didn’t have the right to talk back, to use bad language…They would punish
us by putting us on one-on-one
[supervision] when we broke the rules.””
The time is long overdue for the government to end this harmful policy.