Unaccompanied and Uneducated: The Billions Spent at the Border
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT is awarding billions of dollars in government contracts to organizations responsible for educating thousands of detained migrant children under a complicated patchwork of procedures and policies that are subject to limited oversight and even less transparency.
Federal regulations state that children in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services, including unaccompanied migrant children, those who have been separated from their families, and those who are in shelters and other detainment centers with family members, must receive six hours of instruction every weekday, making education the single biggest part of their daily lives. But it's unclear what that education looks like, who is providing it, how much it costs, whether there are proper supports in place for children with disabilities and those working through traumatic experiences, and who, if anyone, is overseeing it all.
U.S. News contacted the 38 organizations awarded the most money in federal contracts to provide shelter and care to young migrants through the Unaccompanied Alien Children Program. Collectively, since 2015, the organizations have won deals worth upward of $3 billion, with at least one securing upward of $1 billion, according to GovTribe.com, an internet database of federal contracts.
But in response to a series of questions about how education is provided to unaccompanied migrant children, including a request for an interview, Victoria Palmer, who works in the Office of Communication at HHS, said through an email, "We do not have anyone available for media interviews at the moment and are unable to accommodate your request."
The sensitivity around how the federal dollars are spent comes as the number of detained migrant children in HHS custody has skyrocketed, from 2,400 in May 2017 to 12,800 this month, as reported by New York Times. It also comes as the Trump administration continues to criticize the 1997 consent decree known as the Flores agreement, which limits the amount of time migrant children can be detained and is seeking ways to allow them to remain in custody longer – meaning organizations awarded federal contracts to care for these children are likely to see even more money in the months to come.
Indeed, the administration has already begun diverting millions of dollars from other programs to bolster the Unaccompanied Alien Children Program.
"A lot of these kids come with nothing," says Esperanza Zendejas, the superintendent of the Brownsville Independent School District in Brownsville, Texas. Along with its other Rio Grande Valley neighbors, Brownsville provides shelter to thousands of unaccompanied migrant children. "These are children who, if they're here in this country, need to be provided the same quality of education like any other child. That's the right thing to do."
Under federal law, unaccompanied migrant children cannot enroll in the local public school district while in custody of HHS and living in shelters. However, they are required to receive a "structured education," Monday through Friday, throughout the entire year. That education must cover basic academic areas, including math, reading or English as a second language, science, social studies, writing and physical education. Beyond that, shelters or organizations that run the shelters have wide latitude to hire or contract personnel or companies and set a curriculum.
The education providers employed by the organizations must assess the academic level of each child within 72 hours of arrival, under federal regulations, and create an individualized education plan based on their literacy level and linguistic ability.
There are no prescribed academic standards, though education providers are encouraged to "adapt or modify local educational standards to develop curricula and assessments." In addition, federal regulations stipulate that learning materials must reflect cultural diversity and sensitivity.
Salaries for teachers, aides and educational supplies are to be paid for with funding from the federal contracts, but databases of those contracts don't show how much each organization spends specifically on education services.
The organizations receiving federal contracts to run shelters and other facilities for migrant children are diverse and include everything from faith-based charitable organizations, like Catholic Charities and Lutheran Social Services, to organizations that specialize in detainment centers and prisons, like the Shiloh Treatment Center and Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Detention Home.
ts largest facility, Casa Padre in Brownsville, Texas, which used to be a Walmart Supercenter , houses about 1,400 boys.
"We currently have more children in our shelters than we have ever had in the last 20 years," says Salvador Cavazos, the vice president of education services for the company, which has been providing care for unaccompanied children for nearly 20 years and is currently the largest provider.
Cavazos, who used to be the superintendent of Alice Independent School District and Goose Creek Independent School District, both in Texas, says the education of unaccompanied children in the Southwest Key shelters is on par with that of the local public schools.
I know what a classroom and a school is supposed to look like," he says, adding that the children all receive instruction in the core academic areas for six hours each day.
"A lot of them are middle school and high school students, so they are smiling and presenting their projects in front of class," he says. "They're working, they're making academic gains."
He says most of the teachers, which Southwest Key hires itself, are either retired or recent college graduates.
"Pretty much we post the position in the community, and then we have people who apply and we look at their credentials and follow our processes, and then we hire them based on their experience and knowledge and content knowledge," he says.
The picture painted is a rosy one, but the narrative begins to break down upon examining the financials: According to the company, it spent $9.7 million total on education expenses during fiscal 2018. But to meet the average education spending per pupil in public schools, which is $11,762, according to the U.S. Census, Southwest Key would have had to spend $63.5 million on education to cover the roughly 5,400 unaccompanied children in their care – nearly seven times what it spent.
"Without question we are under-resourced," says Cavazos. "You can certainly see the disparity of the two amounts."
"Nonetheless, the money and the funds that we do get from ORR, we believe is sufficient for basic education in the four core subjects as these young people are in our shelters for a limited amount of time," he says. "It provides that base."
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