Collaborative on Global Children's Issues

Local governments and organizations have developed programs to aid unaccompanied children in strengthening their relationships with sponsors and building new connections to their communities. For instance, the Northern Virginia Family Service Family Reunification Program focuses on the developing relationships between child and sponsor, drawing upon attachment theory, trauma recovery, and family systems theories. Other successful approaches work through school districts to provide parenting education and support groups, or even to place school officials or nonprofit staff in local schools to work directly with children and parents to address conflicts and stabilize family functioning.

As protected community spaces outside the home, schools are also an invaluable way for children to expand their social circles. For many, schooling naturally yields opportunities to make friends and find adult mentors. Some schools incorporate more formal mentorship models designed to uplift children with particular needs. For instance, the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC) is a nonprofit organization with staff placed in several Washington, DC, area schools. Unaccompanied children can join LAYC’s Promotor Pathway program to be paired with a long-term mentor with appropriate language and cultural expertise, who will offer individualized support, case management, advocacy, and an opportunity to develop a trusting relationship with an adult. Because this mentoring match is intended to continue for well over one year, it creates meaningful bonds that children come to rely upon for a wide range of purposes.

Federal policymakers can build on this framework of recognizing unaccompanied children’s relationships as assets by revisiting current practices that limit who is available to serve as a child’s sponsor and when they are able to do so. As previously noted, ORR frequently places unaccompanied children with parents or other relatives who already live in the United States. However, when DHS border officials apprehend unaccompanied children with adult relatives, they usually detain the adult relative and transfer the child to ORR. Though this is not comparable to the family separations under the Trump administration, the practice may unnecessarily interrupt the bond between the adult caregiver and child. Such separations can be traumatic and deprive children of an available sponsor with whom they already have a trusted bond. From the standpoint of child welfare, there is abundant evidence that kinship care, including fictive kin such as "play cousins," is vastly superior to the congregate settings that an unaccompanied child’s transfer to ORR’s care would typically entail. Moreover, because children have traveled alongside these adult relatives or other caregivers, right up until their separation by DHS, the current policy also removes the child from the one person who is in the best position to understand exactly what they have endured during their journey.

During times of unusual influx, HHS has sometimes found flexibility in the sponsor-vetting process to permit unaccompanied children and non-parent relatives to be released together shortly after their apprehension. Most recently, during the Afghan evacuation of fall 2021, ORR published field guidance with instructions for the release of unaccompanied children arriving with non-parent/legal guardian caregivers. It is promising that ORR recognized the benefits of having non-parental relatives become sponsors after arriving with a child, even in this limited context. Although the logistics would be very different, a similar approach could be possible at the southern border. Critically, DHS and HHS would need to cooperatively ensure that the adult relatives can be evaluated as potential sponsors. To expedite this process, ORR officials could co-locate in border facilities and begin the vetting as soon as families arrive. If the sponsorship process and appropriate safety checks cannot be completed within 72 hours (at which point a child must be transferred to ORR care), a mechanism could be established for DHS to release the adult caregiver once the sponsorship has been approved.

Revamping how the United States receives immigrant families in this way—by further building upon the immense value of unaccompanied children’s close ties to people who are not their parents, while retaining safeguards to protect children—could improve the well-being of many children arriving in the United States. Doing so could prevent unaccompanied children from being separated from their loved ones just as they enter the country, and it could ensure that their caregivers are available to support them as they transition into both their new communities and developmental stage as young adults.

Jonathan Beier is a developmental psychologist and associate policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute’s Human Services Initiative. Previously, he was a policy fellow on the Senate Finance Committee and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Essey Workie directs the Migration Policy Institute’s Human Services Initiative. She previously held several leadership positions in the government and nonprofit sectors, including regional administrator for the Administration for Children and Families. Her research interests include immigrant families, health and mental health, equity, and leadership development.