Durbin Questions Administration Officials During Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing On Ensuring The Safety And Well-Being Of Unaccompanied Children

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"Any child who shows up at our border deserves to be treated like a real human being and treated like a visitor to America--given protection and help. I hope we all accept that premise. Having accepted that premise, you have to ask whether the current system designed long before we ran into these numbers [the large influx of unaccompanied minors in the last three years], is adequate to the task. Where are these kids going? Why kind of families are they being sent to? How do we make sure they are safe once they're there? The sheer numbers I have given you here make it very difficult to keep up with this flow of people and maintain quality care for these kids.

I'd like to start with Mr. Salazar. You talk about the economic circumstances that create this. Those economic circumstances have been around a long time. What has changed in the last three or four years?

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Can someone address the fact that we offer services, which we have offered for many years, and now we have volumes of numbers of unaccompanied children which are breaking the system and making it difficult for us to keep our promise. Would someone like to talk about the resources dedicated to this [and] new resources to meet this challenge?"

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