A local facility for troubled teens is housing between 10 and 20 immigrant children and teenagers recently separated from their families as a result of President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy for immigrants entering the country at non-authorized U.S. border crossings.
That’s according to U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, who visited Youth For Tomorrow in Bristow for about two hours Friday morning, according to his staff.
Kaine (D) went to the facility, located on Linton Hall Road, with a member of his staff. He spoke with some of the children in Spanish and left feeling they were being “appropriately cared for,” according to member of the senator’s staff.
Some of the children he met with were girls, the staff member said. They were between the ages of 10 and 17 and had arrived since April.
Kaine asked Youth For Tomorrow staff how the children were doing, and they confirmed many had been “traumatized” by their experiences, Kaine’s staff said in an email.
Youth for Tomorrow, a residential facility for troubled teens launched by former Washington Redskins Coach Joe Gibbs in 1986, has been caring for immigrant teens under a contract with federal officials for six years.
But prior to April 2018, those teens arrived at the border on their own, without a parent or guardian.
In a statement, Kaine said he is grateful to Youth For Tomorrow staff for the opportunity to visit the facility as well as what he called their “focus” on reuniting the children with their families.
Where was Corey? Isn’t he the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors? Why wasn’t he checking into this issue?
It sounds like Youth for Tomorrow wasn’t exactly forthcoming in its response to inquiries from local and state officials. What is being hidden here?
Youth for Tomorrow has, in recent years, been a contracted shelter for Unaccomplanied Minors through HHR. That program is different than these children who have been forcibly separated from their parents as the parents attempted to seek asylum. The children who, in essence, have been forcibly kidnapped, have become unaccompanied simply because the government removed them from their parents. We as a nation need to make certain we don’t fall for this obfuscation and deception.
Approximately 40 kids are at Youth for Tomorrow who have been forcibly separated from their parents at the border. These are not kids who came to this country alone. We cannot allow these kidnapped kids to be intermingled with those who came alone. The government needs to wear its shame and wear it publicly.
Thanks to Elena, Jill Palermo (see above article) and Tim Kaine for their attempts to get to the bottom of this horrible situation. We have a refugee crisis that has been handled awkwardly, and in my mind, criminally, by the current administration.
When this business is all over, we will really be able to separate the chaff from the wheat. This is the one thing that corporations and individuals and groups will not be able to wiggle out of. They will either be on the right side of history or the wrong side. The wrong side will simply not be able to recover in a decent society.
