Afghan children between US war and US abuse in 'shelters'
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Close to 200 Afghan children taken to the US without their families during the messy withdrawal are reporting abuse and assault in a system not designed to take them in.
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Afghan children stand in a hangar as they wait for their departure at the US airbase (AP)
Shelters and centers in the US that are taking care of children evacuated from Afghanistan without their parents are still responding to the trauma of the young Afghans.
According to a report by ProPublica, it seems some of the children have run away, stopped eating, and started fights with employees, while others have even tried to take their own lives. At one shelter, some children reported being hurt by employees and being sexually abused.
So far, at least three shelters in Michigan and Illinois have shut down or stopped their operations after they took in groups of Afghan children, and the children were moved from one facility to another.
These children “left their homes with a dream to be stable, to be happy, to be safe. If we cannot offer that here in the US that is a big failure," Naheed Samadi Bahram, US country director for the nonprofit Women for Afghan Women said.
190 boys with no one to take care of them
Overall, more than 1,400 children were brought to the US without their parents and placed in the custody of the US Office of Refugee Resettlement. More than 1,200 of these went on to live with sponsors (who are normally relatives or family friends).
The remaining 190 children are teenage boys with no one in the US to take care of them. More than 80 of the children have been in ORR custody for at least five months. The ORR system is designed to house children for about a month, normally, but the children now feel they've been waiting in a seemingly never-ending detention.
There's still no mechanism in place to reunite the children with their families. 56 of the 190 have been placed in foster care, while the remaining children will soon have to grapple with the onslaught of the refugees that will come into the system after the Biden administration announced it will accept 100,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war, which will mean a large number of children will arrive without their parents.
Trauma
Samaritas, a nonprofit that houses children in Michigan, began housing Afghan children in January. Not only were they not prepared to house Afghan children, with no interpreters on hand to help them, they also had to contend with their trauma.
After the Afghan children arrived at Samaritas, Grand Rapids police responded nearly every other day to calls for incidents like missing persons, suicide threats, fights and assaults. The police reports were unavailable, but internal shelter records document many of those incidents.
One of the boys "acted" like he wanted to hang himself by putting a rope around his neck, another tried to suffocate another child by putting a plastic bag on his head. One kid was even found scratching his arm and told an employee that when his body is in pain, it helps him to stop thinking about his problems. The police are even investigating claims against the non-profit, though it was not disclosed what the claims were.
In another shelter, authorities responded to three allegations of sexual abuse between children, with one child saying he does not feel safe. Employees from this same shelter were said to have assaulted some of the kids.
There are some stories of children who were able to find good families and were taken care of, but as the system is largely backlogged, there is no word on whether these children may be relocated or reunited with their parents.
