Washington, D.C.- Thirty-six child welfare, legal, faith-based, medical, public health, humanitarian, immigration, and community organizations sent a letter to Senate leaders urging them to oppose the reconciliation bill, which dramatically changes existing laws and dismantles key protections for unaccompanied children, leaving them more vulnerable to harm and trafficking.
At the same time, the bill threatens essential services, programs, and tax credits that support many children and families, proposing historic, harmful cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and limits to the Child Tax Credit.
Put simply: The reconciliation bill hurts children. It:
- Mandates a host of unprecedented fines that, taken together, would block nearly all unaccompanied children from pursuing humanitarian protection in the United States,
- Requires children’s families to pay for their time detained in government custody, putting a price tag on parents’ reunification with their own children,
- Directs government officials “to conduct an examination of the unaccompanied … child for gang-related markings,”
- Permits indefinite family detention, in violation of the Flores Settlement,
- Threatens to end critical services for unaccompanied children,
- Threatens to return children who have suffered abuse, abandonment, or neglect to those who mistreated them, by forcing children to pay fines for protection,
- Effectively eliminates the right of most unaccompanied children at the border to present their protection claims to an immigration judge,
- Shares children’s private information with ICE for enforcement purposes, and
- Undercuts the legal framework of care for unaccompanied children, which was long-ago enshrined in law and via a judicial consent decree.