The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants and The Children’s Village present the first installment of Where We Stand: A 20-Year Retrospective of the Unaccompanied Children’s Program in the United States. The retrospective will review the Unaccompanied Children’s Program from the passage of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 until today, assessing 20 years of legislation, policies, litigation, and, most importantly, the care of unaccompanied migrating children by the U.S. federal government, with a view towards next steps and improvements for the years ahead.
This first installment looks at the years immediately following the passage of the Homeland Security Act. It covers three main areas: the basics, including demographics of the children and agency budgets; the law and policies in place to care for the children; and the agency transition, featuring interviews with government staff who were there during the transfer, specifically inside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement, as it took over care for the children from the former Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Before the first installment, a prequel was released on the state of affairs and significant events that led to the inclusion of the unaccompanied children’s provisions in the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (HSA), section 462.
To read the first chapter, please click here.
