Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
It Could Take Two Years For Government To Identify All Migrant Children Separated From Families
It could take the U.S. government up to two years to identify potentially thousands of additional children separated from their parents by the authorities at the southern border, the government said in a court filing. The filing late on Friday outlined for the first time the Trump administration's plan for identifying which family members might have been separated by assessing thousands of records using a combination of data analysis, statistical science, and manual review. (Cooke and Torbati, 4/6)
These families were separated before the administration unveiled its 鈥渮ero-tolerance鈥 immigration policy in the spring of 2018, when nearly all adults entering the country illegally were prosecuted and any children accompanying them were put into shelters or foster care. To identify these families, the government said it would apply a statistical analysis to about 47,000 children who were referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement and subsequently discharged, according to the court filing. From there, the government said it would manually review the case records of the children who appeared to have the highest probability of being part of the separated families. (Jacobs, 4/6)
In other immigration news 鈥
A Mexican man who was exhibiting flu-like symptoms died in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center this week, immigration officials said Friday. Abel Reyes-Clemente, 54, died at the聽Florence Service Processing Center in Arizona two days after he was treated for flu symptoms, officials said in a news release. (Frazin, 4/6)
Florida Democratic Congresswomen聽Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell聽said they were denied access to a facility holding unaccompanied immigrant children.聽The members of Congress said in a joint statement from their offices that they were told they would be "denied entry to the refugee resettlement facility in Homestead, [Fla.]," which they planned to visit Monday, "despite a new law mandating Congressional access there, and a recent announcement of plans to massively expand beds at the site amid lingering concerns over inadequate staffing, space and other services there." (Frazin, 4/6)
The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded Georgia State University a $3.75 million grant to address the health and health disparities affecting America鈥檚 refugee and migrant communities. The grant falls under the agency鈥檚 Prevention Research Center funding cycle, which announced public health prevention research funding for 25 academic institutions across the country. (Pirani, 4/5)