By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times
The government is releasing thousands of illegal immigrant children with latent tuberculosis infections into American communities without assurances of treatment.
Nearly 2,500 children with latent infections were released into 44 states over the past year, according to a court-ordered report on how the Health and Human Services Department is treating the children.
About 126,000 total were released, indicating an infection rate of 1 in 50 migrant children.
The government says it can’t treat the children because they are in custody for a short time and treatment requires three to nine months. HHS releases infected children to sponsors and notifies local health authorities in the hope that they can arrange for treatment before the latent infection becomes active.
Those hopes are often dashed.
Local health officials say the notifications are infrequent and the child has often already arrived when they are told about a case in their jurisdiction.
“We do not know how often the sponsors follow through on treatment,” the Virginia Department of Health told The Washington Times in a statement. “By the time outreach takes place, the child has sometimes moved to another area or state.”
The Times reached out to HHS for this report.
The children in the department’s custody, known in government-speak as unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, are a particularly tricky population.
Under the law, Homeland Security must discharge most children quickly and send them to HHS. The department holds the children in government-contracted shelters while searching for sponsors to take in the children caught at the border without parents.
The system is fraught with problems, including crowded shelters and struggles to find capable and conscientious sponsors. In thousands of cases, the government quickly loses track of the children.
That makes the government’s release of children with latent infections all the more complicated. Treatment requires knowing where the children are and having sponsors willing to follow through on the lengthy course of care.
Tuberculosis isn’t the only disease that’s challenging.
The government had to create protocols to handle chlamydia and gonorrhea, according to the court report, written by Aurora Miranda-Maese, the monitor ordered by the court to keep tabs on how the government is treating children in its custody.
Ms. Miranda-Maese identified tuberculosis as one challenge. Because the government wants to rush the children out of custody, authorities usually don’t feel they have the time to begin treatment.
“Minors are not routinely treated for [latent tuberculosis infection] while in [resettlement] care because the average length of stay is typically shorter than the time required to complete treatment, and because there could be negative effects from discontinuing … treatment before completion, such as developing drug-resistant TB,” Ms. Miranda-Maese wrote.
She said the government relies on a reporting system through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to alert local health authorities.
Virginia’s experience suggests the follow-through rate for sponsors to obtain the needed treatment is low.
Virginia’s health department said it focuses on connecting local health officials with sponsors who take in children younger than 5 at high risk of latent infections progressing to active tuberculosis and juveniles who might be infected with HIV.
The CDC, which runs the notification portal, didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Times.
UACs do get routine dental care and reproductive care, including pregnancy tests, and are given information about emergency contraceptives. The government will also facilitate abortions, including making “all reasonable efforts to secure a legal abortion” for girls in states where the procedure is restricted.
The report details the levels of accommodation for the children, including individualized assessments of their educational attainment and daily schooling that is “sensitive to the cultural differences of the minors in care.”
Under new rules, each UAC is allowed at least 50 minutes of phone calls every five days and additional 45-minute calls on birthdays and holidays.
The report also revealed that HHS has no “secure” shelters to place UACs with criminal records or histories of violence, threats or sexually predatory behavior.
The report doesn’t say where those dangerous UACs are placed, given the lack of a secure facility.
Tuberculosis is another instance where illegal immigrants receive better treatment than those attempting to enter the U.S. legally.
Those arriving as permanent legal immigrants are required to undergo screening beforehand, as are refugees. Those with active cases can be excluded from entry.
Illegal immigrants who show up at the border are already in the country.
In one glaring example, tens of thousands of illegal immigrants being welcomed and “paroled” into the U.S. through Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ policies are not required to test negative for latent tuberculosis infection before arrival.
Instead, they are told to be screened within 90 days of arrival.
Homeland Security would not disclose the compliance rate nor the consequences for those who fail to comply.
In a brief statement to The Times, the department did call the rate “high” and pronounced itself “encouraged,” but acknowledged that it must prod migrants to comply.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.