Most Afghan kids evacuated to U.S. are now with family. But for others, the agonizing wait continues

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The Biden administration said last fall that 1,300 Afghan children were in U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) custody after being unintentionally separated from their parents amid evacuations last summer. In some cases, they were classified an unaccompanied minors after traveling with a nonparent relative. But in other cases, some traveled without any family members at all.

The vast majority of these kids have since been reunited with U.S. relatives since then, ProPublica reports. That’s welcome news. But roughly 200 children continue to remain in HHS custody, “with nobody here who can take them in,” the report continued.

RELATED STORY: Roughly 1,300 children evacuated to U.S. from Afghanistan are waiting to be reunited with parents

Under the Obama administration, the average length of stay for an unaccompanied child in HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody was 35 days. This is where unaccompanied children are placed until they can be safely connected with a sponsor. But the National Center for Youth Law said that government data as of last month showed that at least 80 of these Afghan kids have been in ORR custody for at least five months, ProPublica said.

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“An ORR official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the agency is doing its best to support the Afghan children by providing interpreters, mental health services, additional staffing and, in recent months, Afghan American mentors,” the report said. The official acknowledged that despite attempts to connect kids with these services, kids are still “are grappling with some really terrible things that nobody should have to grapple with.”

In fact, “employees at several shelters described the trauma among the youths as more severe than anything they’d seen,” the report said. This includes fears that something awful has happened to their parents because of the Taliban. It harkens back to similar fears expressed by Central American children ripped from their families at the southern border by the previous administration. “Children feared that they would never be reunited with their parents and, worse, that their parents were dead,” said a 2020 report from Physicians for Human Rights.

ProPublica reports that the State Department is working to move parents who are still in Afghanistan, “but coordinating departures from Taliban-ruled Kabul has proven challenging.”

This means all that Afghan children in U.S. custody can do is wait—and some under the watch of a provider that already faced allegations of abuses against Central American kids stolen from their parents. ProPublica in October reported that Afghan children at a Heartland Alliance-operated facility in Chicago were in severe distress, including allegations that they were hurting themselves and others. But in 2018, Heartland Alliance also faced allegations that a facility it operated in the area had forcibly drugged a separated child, and was punishing others for not adequately cleaning.

The HHS inspector general and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services said at the time they had each opened a probe into the allegations. During this time, Heartland cleared itself of any wrongdoing, apparently. 

Now facing further allegations, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin has called for an HHS inspector general probe into Heartland Alliance’s Bronzeville facility. “The ProPublica report raises serious and troubling allegations about the health and safety of children in an ORR-supported facility,” Durbin said in a November statement. “As such, I request that ORR take immediate steps to ensure that the children at the Bronzeville center are receiving the support they need, including by providing appropriate interpreters on site.”

“Afghan children, like all unaccompanied children we serve, need a system of care that is trauma-informed and supports their emotional, physical and cultural wellbeing,” tweeted the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. “We will continue to provide legal services and advocate for children in federal custody.”

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