Migrant children will be brought to the Long Beach Convention Center sometime this week, and the City of Long Beach has created an online portal where local organizations and residents can make donations or volunteer their services at the site, according to a City press release.
The facility is expected to hold up to 1,000 migrant children on a rolling basis, all of whom have relatives and sponsors living in the US that have been identified. The children will be held at the convention center until these relationships are confirmed by the federal government.
The site will be fully funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The HHS has a long history of funding sites that allow or perpetrate sexual violence or the forcible drugging of migrant children in custody.
Donations for the new Migrant Children Support Fund are being collected by the Long Beach Community Foundation, and will purportedly be used to provide resources “intended to make the children more comfortable during their stay in Long Beach and during the reunification process,” according to a City press release.
The City has made ongoing attempts to frame the approval of the convention center site as an altruistic move in the best interest of the children involved.
In a City press release, the opening of the mass facility was described as “part of the federal government’s national humanitarian effort to support unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the southern borders.”
But local nonprofit organizations, spearheaded by the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition, have condemned the federal government’s treatment of children in its custody as anything but humanitarian, and pressed the City to allow them to have access to the facility.
“We demand transparency from the mayor, from the city council. The people of Long Beach deserve to know what’s happening,” Romeo Hebron, Executive Director of the Filipino Migrant Center, said during a protest outside City Hall on April 6. “We demand transparency and accountability, and having access to the facilities if these children are going to be there, which it looks like they will be there. We can’t just have only the people who get awarded these federal contracts to have access to these facilities, we need full transparency.”
Organizations and businesses will be able to fill out an interest form detailing the free services they can provide, which will be considered by HHS. Examples of desired services include the following:
- Food/meal services
- Education
- Recreation
- Mental Health
- Entertainment
- Family reunification
- Child supervision
- Legal services
- Religious services
- Language translation
- Case management
- HHS shelter set up assistance
- Health care
HHS will also consider individuals who apply through the online portal for volunteer positions at the site. Potential volunteers will be asked to provide their name and contact information, and may later be contacted by HHS.
All volunteers will have to submit to a comprehensive background check by a Department of Justice (DOJ) Live Scan, at a level that will allow interaction with children.
