Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
'Dramatic' Drop In Arrests Of Migrant Families, Children Along Border; Officials Cite Aid From Mexican Police, 'Consequences' As Reasons
For the first time in more than a year, the U.S. is apprehending fewer migrant children and families than adults along the southern border, a major demographic shift that Trump administration officials attribute to "consequences" they are applying to deter U.S.-bound migrants.聽U.S. border officials in October apprehended more than 35,000 migrants 鈥 including nearly 10,000 families and 3,000 unaccompanied migrant children 鈥 along the U.S.-Mexico border, marking the fifth consecutive monthly decline in arrests there, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials said Thursday.聽 (Montoya-Galvez, 11/14)
Fewer Central American families and unaccompanied minors are making it across the U.S.-Mexico border, something that Border Patrol officials attribute to Mexico deploying soldiers to stop migrants at the Guatemala border and to word filtering down in Central America that migrants no longer are being allowed to stay in the United States while their case plays out in federal immigration court. (11/14)
Under President Donald Trump, the mass detention of migrant children has climbed to record numbers. Tonight, a joint investigation from FRONTLINE and The Associated Press called聽Kids Caught in the Crackdown examines the growing network of federally-funded shelter programs 鈥 and the lasting impact on children held in U.S. government custody. 鈥淲e know from the American Academy of Pediatrics that there鈥檚 no amount of time that it鈥檚 safe for children to be detained,鈥 Neha Desai, an attorney who helps monitor the conditions for migrant kids inside detention facilities, says in the above excerpt. 鈥淲e know definitively that detention harms children; that every single day they鈥檙e there, those impacts compound.鈥 (Taddonio, 11/12)
Privacy advocates are suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to get answers about how the agency is using new technology to collect DNA from migrant families at the border. In its lawsuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) asked for information about how DHS has deployed its Rapid DNA technology, including "the number of individuals whose DNA had been collected, the accuracy of DNA matches, and the exact gene processing used to identify parent-child relationships." (Ongweso, 11/14)