Shelter Stagnation: Migrant Children Wait Months for Release

A 9-year-old girl from El Salvador has spent more than seven months in a government-run shelter in the Houston area. Her attorney says the child, identified as M.R., became distressed after waiting for release. She told her mother on the phone that she felt lonely, suffered from nosebleeds, and suspected she had an infection.

M.R.'s mother, Carmen, was in the process of regaining custody when federal immigration officials arrested her. Despite having a pending asylum case and no criminal record, Carmen was sent to a detention center in Louisiana. "Both of us are trapped," Carmen said in a September interview. "She's just a helpless little girl. The process shouldn't be like this."

As of September, nearly 1,900 children were held at shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement. Congress created this office over a decade ago to care for unaccompanied children. However, the second Trump administration has reconfigured the office to aid its deportation campaign, according to lawyers and child advocates.

Jonathan White, a former federal health official who ran the office's unaccompanied children program during President Trump's first term, said the administration is reshaping the shelter system from a child welfare program into a detention program. He noted that the office is legally required to place children in the least restrictive setting and release them without unnecessary delay.

M.R. arrived in the United States late last year after wading across the Rio Grande with her older sister. They were detained by Border Patrol officers in Texas. The girls hoped to join their mother and brother in Tennessee. M.R.'s father, uncle, and pregnant cousin were murdered by gang members in El Salvador, according to Carmen.

Average stays in the office's custody have stretched to nearly six months, a sharp increase from the typical one-month wait seen before the current administration. Alvaro Huerta of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center said a 3-year-old remained in custody for 300 days. Another 6-year-old stayed for seven months after her father was detained during the vetting process.

Carmen attended a DNA test appointment in April, which officials described as the final step to secure her daughter's release. Immigration officers detained her without a warrant at the appointment. The resettlement office subsequently rejected her sponsorship application, citing the detention it had helped facilitate. M.R.'s sister was released when she turned 18, three weeks after her arrival.

The Department of Homeland Security said in an email that it is working to locate 450,000 unaccompanied children from the Biden administration. The agency claimed many were placed with unvetted sponsors, a dispute that has been raised by critics. HHS did not respond to questions about the treatment of unaccompanied minors or the specific case of M.R.