Amnesty International USA\u2019s\nrecent immigration campaign in Florida features a series of billboards that\nnegatively highlight the Department of Health and Human Services\u2019 (HHS)\nHomestead Emergency Care Shelter. Its ads are riddled with demagoguery and\ncreate distorted images for Floridians, despite the fact that the shelter saved\nthousands of minors from across the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Placing the ads<\/a> throughout Florida in conjunction with the United Nation\u2019s World Children\u2019s Day earlier this week, the billboards read, \u201cYou Are Now 7 Miles Away From Where Kids Are Locked Up,\u201d \u201cWe Don\u2019t Believe in Locking Up Children,\u201d and \u201cFlorida: Amusement Parks. Beaches. Detained Children.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the ads suggesting that migrant children are currently being \u201clocked up\u201d at the facility, the facility has not housed a single child since August 3, 2019<\/a>. But more importantly, the characterization of the shelter being prison-like and implying that it\u2019s violating human rights is egregious and a clear act of political theater. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Implemented under the Obama administration in 2016<\/a>, the Homestead Emergency Care Shelter was a facility that housed unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who arrived at the southern border. UACs are minors who arrive to the U.S. without a legal guardian. They were then placed in the Homestead Shelter for an average of 25 days <\/a>before being released to an appropriate sponsor. The process took roughly a month to ensure children were not released to human traffickers, violent criminals, or adults fraudulently posing as family members. It would have also been grossly negligent to release a minor in a foreign city without a guardian. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While at the facility, children were given access<\/a> to 24\/7 medical care, dining halls with three meals and two snacks a day, educational classrooms teaching English, math and science, indoor and outdoor recreational facilities, and many more support services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The primary objective was to\nprovide support and care to minors who arrived in destitute conditions and to\nproperly place them with suitable sponsors, who are often parents and relatives\nalready within the United States. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite this public information, Amnesty International USA\u2019s, executive director, Margaret Huang, continued with the campaign and asserted<\/a>, \u201cthe Trump administration has detained children for the act of seeking safety,\u201d while Amnesty International USA\u2019s migration researcher, Denise Bell, added that \u201cwe don\u2019t want temporary care influx facilities like Homestead to exist at all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The defiance from Huang and Bell is unsurprising. Other open borders advocates have continually criticized the facility for years despite never seeing the facility first-hand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n FAIR staff have visited the\nshelter as recently as March 2019 and confirmed that the mainstream media and\nopen borders advocacy organizations were giving incomplete accounts of the\nfacility. <\/p>\n\n\n\n