Amid Quarrel With Pope, Trump Strips Miami Charity of Funding to House Migrant Kids

The Trump administration has abruptly canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities to shelter and care for migrant children who enter the U.S. alone, ending a relationship between the Catholic Church and the U.S. government dating back to the first arrivals of Cuban exiles in South Florida.

{snip}

The Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, has paid Catholic Charities in Miami for several years to house immigrant children who enter the U.S. without parents or adult supervision. The non-profit operates the equivalent of a federally funded foster care system, separate and apart from state agencies that have custody of abused and neglected children. The federal government reached out to the charity in late March about the cancellation of the funding.

{snip}

In response to a Miami Herald inquiry, the Department of Health and Human Services said the daily population of unaccompanied migrant children in the agency’s care was “significantly lower,” at 1,900, under the Trump administration compared to a peak of 22,000 under the Biden administration.

{snip}

There are still children in the care of Catholic Charities in Miami and elsewhere. It’s unclear how many there are, and where they are besides South Florida, or where they will go. Robert Latham, associate director of the University of Miami Law School’s Children and Youth Law Clinic, said any relocation to a new foster home or shelter likely would be traumatic for children who already have suffered uncertainty and loss.

{snip}

Under the contract, Catholic Charities operated a full-service child welfare program in Miami-Dade. One shelter – named Msgr. Bryan O. Walsh Children’s Village after an early advocate for refugee children – has 81 beds for unaccompanied minors. The program provides foster homes and family reunification and offers supportive services, “given the trauma that many of these children have endured before arriving in the U.S.,” Wenski wrote.

{snip}

Citrus Family Care Network, a mental-health and social-services provider in Miami-Dade, has 200 employees devoted to caring for 1,200 kids in its foster care and child welfare program, said Esther Jacobo, a former Florida Department of Children and Families secretary who is the program’s director. Jacobo said it likely would take three to six months, at least, for any agency to get a new child welfare program up and running.

{snip}

The Catholic Church has a long history of providing services to unaccompanied immigrant children in South Florida, dating back as far as the 1960s. In 1959, as Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba, Catholic Charities and the U.S. State Department initiated a covert program called “Operation Pedro Pan,” that began with the airlift to Miami of the children of Cuban dissidents, but came to include families seeking a better life for their kids. Msgr. Bryan Walsh directed the efforts.

While some of the Pedro Pan children had extended family members who could take them in, others moved into orphanages run by the Catholic Church. As the program expanded, children were welcomed into foster homes in Miami and elsewhere – some as far away as New York and the Midwest.

It is estimated that the airlift rescued as many as 14,000 unaccompanied children. Many went on to become business and community leaders in South Florida.

{snip}