Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Xavier Becerra, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, Celebrates His Confirmation Anniversary

Last week, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Xavier Becerra, celebrated his one-year confirmation anniversary. Becerra is the first ever Latino to hold this position just as COVID-19 vaccines were first becoming available. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the Latinx community at higher rates than other communities. As of last week, the Centers […]

Audio from migrant detention facilities reveals sexual assault by staff

New audio from inside a U.S. government shelter for unaccompanied migrant children in Fort Bliss, Texas, reveals allegations of sexual misconduct by staff toward minors, acknowledgement the children were running low on clean clothes and shoes as well as a reluctance by officials to make public the scope of the facility’s COVID-19 outbreak. In the […]

Children in detention centers allege sex assault in retaliation for protesting

The poor treatment of migrant children at the hands of U.S. border agents in recent months extends to include allegations of sexual assault and retaliation for protests, according to dozens of accounts by children held in Arizona. A 16-year-old Guatemalan boy held in Yuma, Arizona, said he and others in his cell complained about the taste […]

HHS requested DOD support to house up to 5,000 unaccompanied children

Yesterday Pentagon officials confirmed that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has asked the Department of Defense (DOD) for space to house up to 5,000 immigrant children through the end of the fiscal year. HHS Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan “requested DOD support to identify space to house up to 5,000 unaccompanied alien children on […]

According to documents, HHS received 4,500 complaints of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors

The Department of Health and Human Services received more than 4,500 complaints of sexual abuse against unaccompanied minors from 2014-2018, according to internal agency documents released Tuesday by Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch. “I am deeply concerned with documents that have been turned over by HHS that record a high number of sexual assaults on […]

Immigrant children moved out of shelters and foster homes to a tent city

Hundreds of migrant children in recent weeks have been moved from private foster homes or shelters to a tent city in south Texas, according to The New York Times. The children were reportedly placed on buses in the middle of the night to move from shelters in locations ranging from New York to Kansas to the facility in Tornillo, Texas. The children are […]

Investigation reveals that Trump Administration lost track of another 1,500 children

The Trump administration is unable to account for the whereabouts of nearly 1,500 migrant children who entered the United States alone this year and were placed with sponsors after leaving shelters, according to congressional findings released yesterday. In findings that lawmakers described as troubling, Senate investigators said the department could not determine with certainty the […]

House Democrats want to know the administration’s plan to reunite separated families

House Democrats on Tuesday demanded that the Trump administration provide its plan to reunify more than 500 undocumented children who remain separated from their parents as a result of the government’s zero-tolerance immigration policy. “Since the Administration instituted and rescinded the zero-tolerance policy, which purposefully targeted and separated migrant children from their parents, we have […]

Tent City to be built in Texas to house Immigrant children

The Trump administration has selected Tornillo, Texas, for the construction of tents to house immigrant children, many of whom have been separated from their parents under the new “zero tolerance” policy. The Department of Health and Human Services will build a “tent city,” full of large tents, that is estimated to hold 450 beds for […]

New HHS Survey Standards will Help Reduce Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities Among Latinos

In an effort to improve its ability to highlight disparities in health status and target interventions to reduce them, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced final standards to more consistently measure race, ethnicity, sex, primary language, and disability status yesterday. “It is our job to get a better understanding of why disparities […]