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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Detained Immigrant Children Become a Billion-Dollar Industry

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Friday, July 20, 2018   

ST. PAUL, Minn. – The cost to taxpayers for detaining immigrant children has grown from $75 million a year in 2007 to almost $1 billion today, according to new analysis by the Associated Press.

Tom Jawetz, vice president for immigration policy with the Center for American Progress, said many of the costs to care for kids in federal custody are justifiable. But, he noted, policies enacted over the past year by the Trump administration have led to a surge in spending.

"It is a very poor use of taxpayer dollars, though, to throw thousands of additional children into that system who have no business being cared for by the office of refugee resettlement because they're here with their parents,” Jawetz said.

Nearly 12,000 kids are currently being held at some 90 sites across 15 states. Kids are kept in detention while their parents go through the immigration process or as they wait for foster care placement if they came to the U.S. alone.

Supporters of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy say stronger border security is necessary to discourage people from entering the country illegally.

Companies operating detention facilities get grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and include for-profit, religious and nonprofit firms. A recent USA Today report found one CEO at a nonprofit saw his annual income double in the past year to nearly $1.5 million. 


Jawetz said the vast majority of those seeking asylum did not enter the U.S. illegally.

"The law right now, as it is written, provides the right to apply for asylum, regardless of where or how you enter the country,” he said. “And so these individuals who are applying for asylum are following the law, and they're doing exactly what the law requires of them."

In Minnesota, there are only two known cases of separated children who arrived in the state weeks before the Trump administration announced the zero-tolerance policy.

Groups that work with such cases include the Minneapolis-based Advocates for Human Rights and the St. Paul-based International Institute of Minnesota, but for privacy reasons neither could reveal further details about the children.


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