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Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I reserve the right to object. I will share a few of my thoughts on this, but first I wanted to note that my colleague from Iowa is celebrating his birthday today. So a very happy birthday to you.

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Mr. MERKLEY. And I understand it is his 91st; is that correct?

We should all want to be able to engage in public policy and public debate and dialogue when we have reached the start of our 10th decade, so congratulations to you.

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Mr. MERKLEY. This topic that you have brought up today is one that I have had deep engagement in because I share your concerns about these congregate care facilities.

Back in 2018, I was the first Member of the House or Senate to go down to the border and to witness the separation of children from their parents and then to go up the road to knock on the door of Casa de Padre, which was run by Southwest Key, where I had heard a rumor that perhaps a thousand boys were being warehoused. When I knocked on the door, they didn't want to let me in to see what was going on, so we did a live stream feed of the conversation. I was trying to get the manager to come out and brief me, and the manager said, yes, he would be out, but actually what he did was he called the police to have me arrested.

The police didn't arrest me, but they did tell me that Casa de Padre, run by this organization, Southwest Key, had no interest in letting a Member of Congress come inside, a Member of the Senate come inside; move on. But because this was live-streamed, it became national news. As a result of that, the press got in the following weekend, and I was able to go back with a group of legislators 2 weeks later.

So I very much understand the challenge in the congregate care system and undertook a deep dive with experts across the country on, how do we address this problem? The long and short of it is, those experts all came together, and they helped draft a bill called the Children's Safe Welcome Act, because the issues that exist at Southwest Key are not unique to Southwest Key. In fact, we have had really deep challenges in one congregate care facility after another. Putting children into large, mass settings just does not at all provide a foundation for them to thrive.

2023] Decreasing ORR's Dependence on Congregate Care: Four Recommendations for Progress POLICY BRIEF

Since its inception, the Unaccompanied Children Program under the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) has relied on congregate care for its custody of unaccompanied children. Congregate care is a catch-all term for group homes and larger institutions that care for many children away from families (see below for more details). Over the past decade, while the domestic child-welfare system has drastically reduced the use of mass congregate settings and emphasized kinship settings and family-like placements that are better for children's well-being, ORR has increased its reliance on large settings. For example, as of 2019 more than 90 percent of unaccompanied migrant children have been held in facilities with more than 50 beds, despite evidence that congregate care risks harming children's long-term mental health. Experts concur that ``any amount of time that a young person spends in an institutional placement is too long.'' Children averaged 30 days in ORR care in fiscal year 2022, while the length of stay was considerably longer for children placed in more restrictive settings.

It is critical that ORR engage in a long-term effort to move away from congregate care and toward more appropriate practices of community-based programs or family-like foster care placements. Until this happens, a critical step to limiting congregate care includes safe reductions of length of stay. Any guiding vision should include community-based programs that offer a high quality of care, minimal time away from family, and reunifications to safe, stable homes.

Based upon ongoing research that the Women's Refugee Commission conducted with current and former staff at congregate care facilities, post-release service providers, attorneys, and child advocates across the United States, this policy brief details concrete steps toward minimizing the use of congregate care for unaccompanied children. The brief also identifies four ways to enlist culturally sensitive, evidence-based, and trauma-informed approaches in working with young people within and beyond current ORR facilities. They are: (1) adopting geolocation in children's initial placements (i.e., placing children in a facility close to their family or sponsor); (2) building a pipeline of community-based care providers; (3) improving language access for non-Spanish-speaking children in custody; and (4) enhancing post-release services. Taken together, these efforts are critical to reducing ORR's reliance on congregate care, limiting children's length of stay in federal custody, and ensuring their safety following release. What is congregate care?

Although congregate care is defined by the Department of Health and Human Services to include group homes with custody of as few as 7-12 children, in the ORR context, congregate care typically refers to ``a licensed or approved child care facility operated by a public or private agency and providing 24-hour care and/or treatment typically for 12 or more children who require separation from their own homes or a group living experience.''

ORR continues to rely predominantly on a network of very large facilities--50 beds or more--despite a precipitous shift away from institutional-based care for children nationally. ORR has a greater percentage of congregate care facilities in its provider network than states generally permit for domestic child-welfare placements. Similarly, ORR's congregate care facilities are larger than their counterparts in the domestic child-welfare systems. In 2021 and 2022, tens of thousands of unaccompanied children were held in emergency intake sites (EISs) and influx care facilities (ICFs) in converted convention centers, stadiums, and military bases. Ranging from 1,000 to 5,000 beds, EISs and ICFs are unlicensed by state child welfare authorities and not bound by conditions stipulated by the Flores Settlement Agreement.

Interviews with ORR stakeholders, including child psychologists, social workers, and family reunification specialists in ORR facilities, underscore the potential and actual harm that congregate care facilities can cause for children. Interviewees reported limited outdoor activity, restricted contact with parents and caregivers, and discriminatory treatment of LGBTQI+, Indigenous, and West African youth. Stakeholders described children simultaneously struggling to cope with the uncertainty of family reunification, procedural opacity, ongoing legal proceedings, and the possibility of deportation. Taken together, our research concludes that children should be reunified with family or sponsors as quickly as possible, while ensuring their safety and adequate support following release. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LIMITING CONGREGATE CARE AND BOLSTERING POST- RELEASE SERVICES 1. In initial placement decisions, geolocation is a best practice.

Stakeholders agreed unanimously that geolocation is a best practice and should be adopted as ORR policy. That is, when a child is transferred from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to ORR custody, efforts should be made to place them in an ORR facility in the geographical area where the child's family (specifically, a Category 1 or Category 2 sponsor) is located. For children who may not know where family members live, the potential sponsor's area code can serve as a proxy, given that most children arrive with a family member's phone number.

Interviewees contended that geolocation is advantageous for several reasons. First, placement close to family facilitates communication with and support of the sponsor in completing the requisite paperwork, which can be cumbersome. Interviewees working with children in ORR custody believed that, in general, children are released sooner when placed near their parent or family member. Second, visitation with potential sponsors can reduce the stress of children who spend protracted time in ORR custody. This is especially applicable for children who are reunifying with parents or family members after prolonged separations. Third, family reunification specialists reported that observing the child with the potential sponsor can identify or alleviate safety concerns; if needed, specialists can more quickly turn to a more appropriate sponsor or placement. Fourth, geolocation allows legal service providers who have already prescreened children while in ORR custody to continue to provide legal representation following release. This additionally alleviates the considerable financial and logistical burden on children to find legal representation in a new location. Fifth, geolocation can aid with warm handoffs to area social service providers who provide key resources, such as information about state laws for securing health insurance and assistance with school enrollment. Lastly, geolocating children close to family members relieves travel costs for ORR and logistical burdens of transportation arrangements for facility staff. 2. ORR must build a pipeline of community-based care providers.

The ultimate goal of ending congregate care, including large-scale facilities, for unaccompanied children will not happen overnight. Despite repeated directives from Congress, ORR has failed to take adequate meaningful steps necessary to limit its reliance on congregate care. ORR must proactively invest in long-term, community-based programs for unaccompanied children. This includes launching a series of pilot programs that are culturally sensitive, evidence based, and trauma informed. Over the long run, these community-based placements will prove cost-affective when compared to the daily cost of $775 per bed in influx facilities and $290 per bed in shelters and the nearly $4.79 billion spent on emergency influx and intake facilities.

Networks of community-based care exist in the domestic child welfare system. including community-based placements, small group homes, and foster care. These programs provide trauma-focused, intensive care for children and youth in home-like environments that facilitate their healthy development. Children attend local schools and are integrated into the community. To establish a pipeline of providers, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and ORR should:

provide technical training assistance to community-based organizations to navigate federal funding applications, operational requirements, and reporting;

engage outside child welfare experts, subject matter experts, and impacted community members to conduct site visits and provide consultation and recommendations to community-based organizations;

create a public plan to transition to 100 percent small- scale facilities with attention to the known challenges across contracting and grant-making, staffing limitations, availability, outreach, recruitment of potential providers, program officer oversight, and organizational reporting;

improve handoffs to community service providers in areas where unaccompanied children reunite with family; and

prescreen sites and secure contracts of a variety of models of care in advance, rather than identifying out-of-network placements on a case- by-case basis. 3. Rectify problems of children's language access in care.

ORR and its subcontractors are required by law ``to take reasonable steps to provide meaningful access'' to interpretation. According to interviewees, however, children's rights to use their primary language and their access to interpreters are regularly sidestepped within ORR facilities. The primarily affected children are Indigenous children from Central America who are presumed to speak Spanish, but whose primary languages are often Indigenous languages. When asked why language lines are not used, facility staff described the inconvenience of scheduling telephonic interpreters when they can ``get by'' in Spanish, that interpretation prolongs meetings with children amid high caseloads, and a lack of awareness of children's language rights due to high staff turnover within facilities. Further, several respondents reported that children are dissuaded from using their native language with other children, and are even separated to different pods or during activities to ensure that staff can understand the conversations. According to researchers, the deliberate separation of children from the same linguistic communities is a form of linguistic racism. Legal advocates said that children are misidentified as potentially trafficked and, conversely, not flagged as trafficked or vulnerable to trafficking because of mistakes in the intake and family reunification processes when an interpreter is not used.

Language-proficiency problems negatively impact the quality of children's care in ORR custody and likely lengthen the time that children spend apart from their families. ORR should expressly prohibit practices that prevent children from using their chosen language; incorporate training guidance for facility staff; provide translated signage in all facilities of many of the dominant languages of children in their custody; and provide regular monitoring that facilities are complying with children's consistent and meaningful access to interpretation. In addition, at time of intake, ORR should direct facility staff to ask children their first language and to use language access lines when completing all required intakes. For children, the use of their own language relieves stress, provides cultural familiarity, and enhances communication. While more time and cost intensive, the use of interpretation ensures greater accuracy of information and safety of the child's eventual placement. 4. Provide localized, wrap-around services for unaccompanied children released to a non-relative sponsor.

Post-release services (PRS) are contracted, social-service support provided to children following their release from ORR custody. PRS currently operate via bridging and referral programming in which a PRS worker connects the child and sponsor to critical mental health, medical, legal, and educational resources in their local community via a series of phone calls, mailings. or emails. Depending on the need, in-person visits are conducted. Stakeholders interviewed for this study, including PRS providers, affirmed the importance of localized services for children following release from ORR custody and called for expanded, in-person services for all children.

One stakeholder explained how teenagers are commonly prohibited from enrolling in public schools despite their legal right to attend school: ``They need someone knowledgeable about the US to accompany and advocate for them when school administrators are unlawfully turning them away.'' Others emphasized that PRS should be provided by local service providers who are knowledgeable of the nuances of state law and educational practices that may obstruct school enrollment, and who have up-to-date information regarding service availability. One stakeholder explained, ``The flyers provided are out of date or organizations on the forms are maxed out; kids really need people who have relationships with a community of providers.'' As one PRS provider stated, ``They need accompaniment, not more flyers.''

One challenge is that current PRS schemes are insufficient to meet the diverse needs of unaccompanied children. An ideal approach is to align PRS to a localized, wrap-around service model. Interviewees emphasized, however, that PRS should never be used to delay the reunification of a child and sponsor and that families should continue to be allowed to decline the services.

Given renewed concerns about the labor exploitation of unaccompanied children, ORR should:

offer PRS to all children released to a non-relative sponsor (``category 3'' sponsors);

offer PRS if requested by the child, family, or sponsor;

include an immediate, individualized needs assessment for child, sponsor, and family (as relevant) following release in all levels of PRS;

ensure that PRS needs assessments result in local. in- person social-service brokerage rather than remote referrals; and

eliminate the PRS backlog--which, at the time of writing, stands at well over 10,000 cases--with a goal that PRS appointments be in place when reunification occurs.

In contrast to traditional PRS services, which are service driven and problem based, wrap-around services enlist a strengths-based, needs-driven approach that builds on individual and family strengths. Wrap-around services are evidence-based, culturally responsive accompaniment practices that promote child and family involvement in setting goals to ensure children's well-being. These services are also more effective in ensuring children are safe given the close and trusting relationship children have with their care team. Engaging in local, community-based partnerships to provide wrap-around services simultaneously will strengthen ORR's network for placing children in the least restrictive environment and move the US toward ending congregate care for all children.

This policy brief was written by Lauren Heidbrink, PhD, associate professor of human development at California State University, Long Beach, and consultant for the Women's Refugee Commission. It was reviewed and edited by Katharina Obser, Mario Bruzzone, Dale Buscher, Joanna Kuebler, and Diana Quick of the Women's Refugee Commission.

For more information. contact Mario Bruzzone. Women's Refugee Commission

The Women's Refugee Commission (WRC) improves the lives and protects the rights of women, children, and youth who have been displaced by conflict and crisis. We research their needs, identify solutions, and advocate for programs and policies to strengthen their resilience and drive change in humanitarian practice. Since our founding in 1989, we have been a leading expert on the needs of refugee women, children, and youth and the policies that can protect and empower them. womensrefugeecommission.org.

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, it is called ``Decreasing OOR's Dependence on Congregate Care: Four Recommendations of Progress,'' written by the Women's Refugee Commission. But I assure you, this document is not alone. There is commission after commission, expert after expert who has weighed in to say that we have to eliminate these congregate care facilities, which is exactly what the Children's Safe Welcome Act does.

You know, these are children who are going through the process of claiming refugee status, and they are going to go through an adjudication of that status, and they are either going to be able to stay in the United States--and that is eventually adjudicated--or they are going to be sent back home.

If they are going to stay in the United States, we want a strong foundation for them to thrive as residents of our Nation. If they go back home, we want a strong foundation for them to thrive back home in the country they left.

In either case, we have a moral responsibility to these children. That moral responsibility compels us to eliminate these congregate care facilities that are not the right setting. Children should be quickly sent to small settings, to homes. They should be in school. They should be with host families. When there isn't a host family that is related, they should be with a host family that is providing a foundation for them. They shouldn't be in a mass congregate care facility--the name sounds much nicer than the reality.

So I am not going to take the time tonight to go through all of these various reports on how bad congregate care is for the children because I think you have already touched on how bad it is with one provider. But shutting down one provider and sending them to other congregate care facilities now means the system is maxed out, which means the children coming in not only go to the remaining beds in a system that is maxed out, it also means that now we have to create temporary influx facilities, which are far worse than congregate care.

So this plan I know is so well-intentioned, and I certainly share the criticisms of the particular company you are addressing, but this is not the right answer. The right answer isn't to max out congregate care and create temporary influx facilities that are even worse; the answer is to get rid of these congregate care facilities and do what report after report, recommendation after recommendation has said will provide a foundation for these children to do well.

The National Center for Youth Law said that these influx facilities that would have to be created ``placed children's safety and welfare at risk.''

The Customs and Border Patrol facilities, which are the other option if we don't create the influx facilities, are described as so dangerous that children have died.

It goes on and on and on.

So given your deep interest in this topic and, really, desire for the children to be well-treated, I wanted to invite you to join me in this structure, this bill, the Children's Safe Welcome Act. Experts have said this is the right thing to do for the children.

For that reason, I will do the formal request, but the informal is, I know your heart is in the right place. I know you are pointing out flaws that are very, very real and that I have been personally witnessing since 2018. But the answer isn't more congregate care for these kids or influx facilities or Customs and Border Protection; it is eliminating these congregate facilities and doing what expert after expert, panel after panel has suggested.

So I am following up here. I ask that you, Senator Grassley, modify your request and that the Merkley amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

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Mr. MERKLEY. It prohibits children from being placed in a home if a resident has a conviction for child abuse or trafficking or convicted of any offense that has a direct and immediate impact on the safety of a child.

I know that these sorts of dialogues--our staff worked quickly to try to prepare responses. But your actual criticisms are inaccurate. And, indeed, what these experts say is that a child should be put in the least restrictive setting that approximates a family in which the child's needs can best be met consistent with the best interests and special needs of that child.

The experts know congregate care is not the place to do that. The problems that exist in one mass setting are bad, but they exist in the other mass settings. So I do invite you--because I know you want to do the best for the children--to meet with the same experts who live this, night and day, seeking to have a system that creates a safe welcome for children and allows them to thrive so that when they get to that point of that asylum hearing, whether they head back to their home country or whether they become residents of the United States, they will be in a great place, not the sort of terrible place that congregate facilities put them. And, unfortunately, your approach continues to rely upon those very congregate facilities experts say need to be eliminated.

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