Earlier today, I sent the following important letter to Members of Congress calling on them to not weaken the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.

Dear Senator/Representative:

This week, the fate of thousands of young, defenseless children will be in your hands. You have a choice to make: support these vulnerable kids or send them quickly back to face the terrifying violence they fled from.

People of faith are resolved that we have an obligation to care for these child refugees. Please read this letter from more than 300 faith-based organizations, detailing the importance of maintaining legal protections for the unaccompanied children. I also want to make sure you saw this recent article from New York Times showing how united people of faith are in the quest to protect these children.

There is a sacred trust that we share to protect all children from harm. We ask you to uphold this trust as you move forward with your efforts to resolve this humanitarian crisis.

Please support these children by approving a supplemental which does not contain modifications that would weaken the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act.

Sincerely,

Sister Simone

Sister Simone Campbell, SSS
NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby
25 E St., NW, Suite 200
Washington, DC 20001

The poverty rate for children under 18 declined from 21.8% in 2012 to 19.9% in 2013, the first time since 2000 that the child poverty rate declined. The number of children living in poverty also declined over the period, from 16.1 million to 14.7 million, and that is good news, indeed! Yet, before we become complacent about those figures, let’s note that children remain the age group most disproportionately poor, with nearly one in five (19.9%) living in poverty. And the poverty rate among children remained well above the 2000 level, when it was 16.2%.

As Deborah Weinstein, Executive Director of the Coalition on Human Needs (CHN) has added, “Nearly 9% of our children are living in a family at half or below the poverty line – well under $9,500 a year for a family of three. More than four in ten of all poor children are so deeply poor. Every day we allow such deep poverty to persist is a day when barriers to health and success grow harder for a child to overcome.” Imagine what this situation would be without the safety-net programs such as food stamps (SNAP), affordable housing subsidies, or jobless benefits to families in poverty!

The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) reminds us that most poor and low-income children have parents who work hard, but for very little pay. Over 70% of poor children lived in families with at least one worker. While children living in single-parent families were far more likely to be poor, 5.5 million children with married parents were also poor in 2013. The very nature of low-wage employment compounds developmental risk for children whose parents have no access to paid time off and/or have unstable work schedules making securing child care a near impossibility. The stress of dealing with these kinds of circumstances can negatively impact children’s development.

Commenting on the recently-released child poverty statistics, Marian Wright Edelman, Executive Director of theChildren’s Defense Fund (CDF) said, “Child poverty is a moral blight on America. It is higher than for American adults, higher than for children in other competitor nations, and higher than the country with the world’s largest economy should ever allow.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) has examined the causal factors behind the improvement in the child poverty rate and concluded that two major factors appear to be responsible. First, the share of families with someone working and the share with someone working full-time, year-round both rose; the latter increased from 76.3% in 2012 to 77.1% in 2013. Second, an increase in median income among families with children from $60,856 in 2012 to $62,161 (adjusted for inflation) in 2013 appears to be also responsible, although low-income families are naturally at the low end of this distribution.

It should be pointed out that while poverty declined among white, Latino and Asian children, it did not decline among African-American children. The CDF commented on this phenomenon indicating that a disproportionate number of African-American children live in families considered profoundly poor, and therefore it’s much more difficult for them to escape poverty.

Young workers, 18 to 24

Just slightly behind children in this poverty matrix are young workers, 18 to 24. Almost 20% – 19.4% – of this youth cohort had incomes below the poverty level despite relatively high education levels. While some of the explanation is due to continued high unemployment in large swaths of the country, much is also due to a lack of good quality jobs with good wages, being saddled with large student-loan debts, a lack of apprenticeships, and failing to qualify (if without children) for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

While the poverty rate of youth has improved since its peak in 2010 (22.2%), it is still higher than its pre-recession level of 17.3% in 2007. And the deep poverty rate for these young adults was higher than all age groups, with the exception of children.

Young adults (18-24) with children head almost 40% of families that are poor, even though more than 45% were working. These young workers usually have low-wage jobs, often minimum wage, and often struggle to get full-time hours. Those without a high school diploma or GED were more likely to be poor (27.4%) than those with a high school diploma (21.1%). Young workers with some college, but no degree had a poverty rate of 16.7%. CLASP tells us that by 2020, two-thirds of jobs will require a postsecondary education. Yet, in 2013, even for those enrolled in school, 17.6% were poor and 36.6% were low-income.

If one breaks down youth statistics into racial and ethnic components, the reality of the poverty rate is intensified. For example, the poverty rate among African-American young adults was 32% and among Latinos it was 21.3%. Despite these facts, whites were still the largest group of poor young adults, but African-American and Latino youth lived primarily in conditions of concentrated poverty (where 40% or more of residents live in poverty). People in these communities not only have fewer employment opportunities, but also often lack adequate public transportation to places outside their communities.

On September 13, 2014, the Washington Post ran an intriguing article in its weekly real estate section asking “Where have the first-time buyers gone?” While the article referred to all the so-called “Millennials” (those born between 1980 and 1995), it also included the youth cohort we are describing – the 18-to-24 year-olds. The lack of participation of Millennials in the housing market is apparently notorious, but, as the article clarifies, the main culprits are not difficult to identify. The “usual suspects” of low wages coupled with high levels of student loan debt inhibit realtors (and others involved in the process) from translating their desire to sell housing into a home loan for these youthful first-time buyers, given more stringent standards of underwriting than existed during the housing “boom.” Rather than a long-term shift toward renting with multiple social factors playing a role, the decline appears to be simply related to the economic circumstances cited above, especially depressed wages.

Ethnic and Racial Differences

The Census data provided both good news and bad news for different racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., but even the good news is relative. While Latino poverty dropped significantly to 23.5% in 2013 from its 25.6% in 2012, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) notes how much higher Latino poverty is than the national rate of 14.5%. A July 2014 poll by Latino Decisions on behalf of NCLR indicates that large shares of Latino voters are anxious about losing a job, and 70% say they are not earning enough to cover basic expenses and are concerned about personal finances. NCLR maintains that the entire Latino community was harmed during the recession years by the slashing of investments in education, housing and nutrition services, programs that are vital to their wellbeing. This may account for the fact that their poverty rate has still not returned to its (still high) level of 20.6% of 2006.

The poverty rate of Latinos is more than twice that of whites. In 2013, the poverty rate for whites was 9.6%, compared with 23.5% for Latinos, 27.2% for blacks, and 10.5% for Asians. Latinos, however, were the only racial or ethnic group to experience a statistically significant change in poverty rates since 2012.

Although the employment picture improved for Latino workers, and child poverty fell rather dramatically, there were overall concerns that these numbers fell from an already high rate. While the unemployment rate of 10.2% in 2012 fell to 8.9% in 2013 among Latinos, more than 40% of these workers earned poverty-level wages. In 2013, a little over 30% of Latino children lived in poverty, compared to almost 34% in 2012, which means that Latino children appear to account for the progress made in child poverty. However, as NCLR points out, of the 14.6 million poor children overall in the U.S., 36.9% are Latinos. Others examining the same data conclude that the recovery is making a significant dent in Latino child poverty as the employment rates of Latino families rebound. It all depends on one’s perspective.

The Census data shows that the median household income increased more among Latino (+$1391) and African-American (+$793) households than white households (+$433). Between 2012 and 2013, the black-white income gap has narrowed from 58.4 cents for every dollar of white median household income to 60.4 cents for every dollar of white median household income. The Latino-white income gap has also narrowed from 68.4 to 70.3 cents on the dollar. These are very modest changes and reflect more on the deteriorating conditions of white workers than on improving conditions in minority ranks. Even the share of employed adults increased for each of these populations while the share for whites remained unchanged.

It is humbling to examine some of the long-term data supplied by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), which analyzed old and new Census Bureau data (all of which is adjusted for inflation) to understand the real impact of inequality on the different groups. For example, the decline in African-American median household incomes from 2000 to 2013 is almost 14% and Latino median household incomes have suffered a decline of nearly 9%, while white median household incomes have experienced a decline of 5.6%. Of course, a median masks the tremendous growth experienced by the top 1%, thus pointing up again the issue and significance of income inequality.

While year-by-year advances are slow, one must acknowledge the progress that has resulted from the Civil Rights Act and other opportunities in the labor market in cutting poverty for African-Americans from 55% in 1959 to 27.2% in 2013. These gains are not trivial, but African-Americans (and Latinos, too) are still more likely to live in poor neighborhoods and places with very high unemployment rates, often for reasons related to systemic discrimination, as well as to bear the brunt of policies that have led to mass incarceration. The poverty rate of African-Americans is still very high despite considerable educational achievement. CAP has analyzed data from various sources to show that in 1965 only one-third of African-Americans had a high school diploma or any additional education, while today nearly 90% do.

Women

For women, the data are unchanged from 2012 to 2013 and, according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), are grim, indeed. The decline in the U.S. poverty rate from 15% to 14.5% did not affect women since overall, one in seven live in poverty, a rate virtually unchanged since 2012. Close to 40% of women who head families live in poverty, and two-thirds of the elderly who are in poverty are women. Only Latinas saw a decline in poverty between 2012 and 2013.

The gender wage gap improved slightly from 76.5% to 78.3% in 2013, which the Census Bureau says is not statistically significant. Most women’s groups think this is hardly a meaningful improvement. The Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), along with many other organizations, claims that barring any policy or legislative changes, women will not receive equal pay until 2058.

Overall, women’s median annual earnings in 2013 were $39,157, compared with $50,033 for men. Full-time, year-round earnings for all women were 2.1% higher in 2013 than in 2012. Latina women saw the largest increase in real wages (4.8%), while Asian women saw the largest decrease in real wages (6.5%). Both white and black women increased their real earnings by .5%. Before white women’s groups get too incensed over their earnings relative to men’s, they need to examine more closely the gap between their pay and that of minority women. In 2013, African-American women earned only 78 cents for every dollar earned by white women and Latinas earned only 71 cents on the dollar.

Income Inequality

The policy ramifications of the poverty data on our nation are myriad. In this blog as well as others, the issue of “income inequality” has been mentioned more than once. But sometimes, that concept may seem abstract until some flesh is put on the bones of the argument. A report issued in early September 2014 by Standard and Poor’s (S&P) does just that.

The S&P report indicates that the wealth gap hurts state budgets. Since it is a known fact that the wealthy both shield much of their income from taxes as well as spend less of it proportionately than others do, sales tax revenue is thereby limited. Across all states, sales taxes account for more than 30% of all revenue, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Before income inequality began to rise consistently, state tax revenue grew about 10% a year on average from 1950 to 1979. That average fell with each subsequent decade, dipping to about 3 ½% between 2000 and 2009. When state lawmakers are faced with the prospect of raising taxes to balance a state budget, income inequality presents a very significant set of challenges that can only be addressed at the national level. State tax code revisions don’t begin to address the consequences.

When enough of these kinds of problems occur, maybe then our congressional lawmakers will eradicate this form of economic injustice and foster a market system that is attentive to the common good. The poverty data of 2013 also clarifies another form of injustice that should be scrubbed from the American system to bring about greater economic equity – the eradication of all racism, classism, ageism and gender discrimination.

Detaining women and children in so-called “family detention centers” is completely morally unacceptable.

Women do not receive adequate access to legal representation; families inside the facilities don’t have access to a sufficient quantity of clean water. Even worse, children are starting to blame themselves for their mothers’ trauma. These situations make up only the tip of a much larger and bleaker iceberg, but luckily, work is being done on several fronts to attempt to end family detention. While some have the potential to actually jumpstart effective change, others are little more than smokescreens that reflect minimal levels of actual improvement. Below, I will detail four such recent actions and gauge their potential moving forward in the nationwide effort to end family detention once and for all!

ICE Announcement

“We understand the unique and sensitive nature of detaining families…The measures ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is announcing reaffirm that understanding and our commitment to ensuring all individuals in our custody are held and treated in a safe, secure, and humane manner.”

On May 13, ICE Director Sarah R. Saldaña introduced a new series of actions “to enhance oversight and accountability [and] increase access and transparency” in family detention centers. They account for the provision of different amenities for the mothers and children locked inside and propose alterations to the physical structures of the centers themselves. Nevertheless, the construction of an additional playroom for children still fails to recognize one fundamental truth: it has never been, is not, and never will be morally acceptable to detain children and their parents. No number of toys can ever repair the psychological damage children suffer from being incarcerated for months, especially for those who now have lived behind bars longer than they have been free.

The recent actions announced by ICE are little more than vague and weak efforts to make a horrific system “better.” Largely symbolic, they sadly do not signal a larger effort by the Department of Homeland Security or the Obama Administration to move toward ending family detention. On the contrary, these so-called improvements may signify the hardening of the administration’s ever-more-resolute position on the necessity of immigrant detention. Justice Rating (1-10): 1, for being little more than a smokescreen obfuscating the continuation of a larger injustice.

The Accountability in Immigration Detention Act of 2015

Luckily, not all movements surrounding immigrant detention provide such few reasons for hope. The Accountability in Immigration Detention Act of 2015, reintroduced by Representative Adam Smith (D-WA-09), attempts to both provide added protections for people being detained and support further research into, and implementation of, alternatives to detention (ATDs). Among other important improvements, the legislation eliminates the congressional detention bed quota; guarantees that all those in detention have access to an orientation on their legal rights; and mandates that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provide community-based ATDs that include case management (many would be run through local non-governmental organizations, also known as NGOs). Of greatest note is the mandate surrounding ATDs: not only are they significantly cheaper than actually detaining people, but they also have proven effective in ensuring women and children seeking asylum attend their “credible fear” hearings. Most importantly, they allow the U.S. asylum system to work without negatively impacting the health and wellbeing of immigrant children and their parents.

Representative Smith’s Accountability in Immigration Detention Act of 2015 proposes several important changes and modifications to the current system of family detention, with his emphasis on community-based ATDs arguably being the most important. For his efforts, we at NETWORK commend Representative Smith. However, in this Congress, it faces very little chance of passage, and it still does not go far enough in calling for an end to family detention. Justice Rating: 5, for movement in the right direction, yet failure to go far enough.

In the Courts

ICE mandates and new legislation are not the only efforts currently underway to reform and/or end the detention of immigrant women and children. Since the beginning of 2015, there have been vitally important developments in two lawsuits, R.I.L.R. v. Johnson and the 1997 immigration case Flores v. Meese.

In R.I.L.R., a D.C. District Court found that the U.S. federal government is not permitted to detain women and children as a method of deterring further migration to the U.S. from Central America, despite the government’s arguments to the contrary. In February 2015, the Court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction enjoining ICE from using deterrence as a justification for keeping an individual with credible fear claims in detention. Predictably, ICE, despite claiming it is currently complying with the injunction, is pushing for a reconsideration of the ruling. This lawsuit could carry on for quite a while longer, but it certainly seems to have some promise in limiting the number of immigrants, especially women and children, who can be legally detained. Justice Rating:7, for having the potential to begin the process of ending a grave injustice.

Finally, we come to the greatest opportunity of all and to the woman who has made it possible: Judge Dolly Gee. To provide some background, back in 1997, a settlement in a case called Flores v. Meese “mandates that the government ‘release a minor from its custody without unnecessary delay’ as long as detention is not required to ensure a child’s appearance in immigration court or for safety reasons.” If children must be held in detention, they are supposed to be held in the “least restrictive environment possible.” On February 2, 2015, a number of human rights groups and lawyers for Central American families in detention filed a motion to enforce the Flores settlement in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. In other words, they wanted the children and their parents currently being detained under a “no release policy” to receive the protection they are guaranteed under Flores.

On April 24, Judge Gee issued a tentative ruling that the current policy of detaining children and their families violates Flores; however, prior to officially filing her ruling, Judge Gee gave both sides 30 days to negotiate a settlement (if you’re doing the math in your head, those 30 days run out this Sunday, May 24). If they can’t reach an agreement, Judge Gee could issue a final ruling, providing the government with a number of choices: release the families, release the children and continue to detain the mothers, or completely change the way immigrant families are detained. Ideally, either the settlement that could be reached over the course of the next few days or Judge Gee’s ruling will fulfill the prediction of an immigration attorney familiar with the proceedings: “it’s the beginning of the end of family detention as we know it.” Justice Rating: 9, for looking like a groundbreaking opportunity to spark the end of family detention.

The Way Forward

It’s clear that, currently, there is a significant amount of momentum surrounding family detention. All of the different types of progress vary greatly in terms of effectiveness. Some, like the ICE actions, serve as little more than a symbolic nod to human rights and faith-based groups like NETWORK; others, like Representative Adam Smith’s new legislation, represent significant forward movement. However, the true debate over the future of family detention seems to depend upon the courts, and especially on how the recent lawsuit presided over by Judge Gee concludes in the coming days. Overall, the most important message to lift up to our members of Congress and to the administration is that detaining families, especially our most vulnerable migrant sisters and brothers, is morally unacceptable, no matter how “justly” it may be carried out. The end of family detention is inevitable. We must join together to lift up our moral voice across the United States, crying out in one voice: “END FAMILY DETENTION!”