Florida once sheltered refugee kids. Today homes that don’t shun them can lose their license

Even before its role in shipping a planeload of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard with scant advance notice, Florida had been steadily chipping away at the state’s role in sheltering and caring for migrants, especially children.

Last winter, the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis formally notified the federal government that the state would no longer participate in a federal program that paid states to house kids called “unaccompanied alien children’‘ until “significant changes” were made in federal immigration policies. Such children enter the country without their parents; often, they are later sent to live with relatives in the U.S.

The announcement followed DeSantis’ signing of an executive order in December that instructed the Department of Children & Families not to renew the licenses of “any family foster home, residential child-caring agency or child placing agency” that housed or offered services to undocumented children.

In his order, DeSantis articulated a host of consequences to not securing the nation’s borders, including “crime, drug trafficking, human trafficking and smuggling, diminished economic opportunities and wages for American workers, stresses on the education and healthcare systems, and the spread of communicable diseases, including the coronavirus.”

The following February, as controversy swirled over the executive order, DCF Secretary Shevaun Harris accused the federal government of operating a human trafficking organization by tolerating the entry of undocumented migrants.

READ MORE: What Miami Venezuelans think of migrants taken to Martha’s Vineyard: ‘This is a new low’

“Through its policies, the federal government has made a decision to encourage the mass smuggling of minors to the southern border without their parents,” Harris said. “No government that claimed to care for children would ever tolerate this.”

Harris added: “The federal government’s careless policies have led to this unsafe situation, and Florida will no longer be complicit in it. By ending the state’s involvement with the [unaccompanied minor] program, [new rules] will finally force the federal government to take full responsibility for the care and treatment of” such children.

In February, DCF said that the number of unaccompanied migrant children entering the U.S. had “ballooned” to more than 146,000 during President Joe Biden’s first year in office, compared to about 33,000 the prior year and 80,000 in 2019.

“The journey to the southern border can be dangerous, and the [unaccompanied children] are often smuggled or trafficked by criminal actors, sometimes with the knowledge or participation of family members who are already illegally in the country,” DCF said at the time.

The new rule yanked the license of any facility that housed and cared for such migrant children. A handful of the shelters were located in South Florida.

A DCF spokeswoman did not immediately respond Thursday to questions from the Herald.

The state’s refusal to shelter migrant children provoked a swift and bitter response, particularly from religious groups, some of which have long provided services to migrant children and families.

Archbishop Thomas Wenski called the governor’s executive order “unhelpful and not totally truthful.”

In a statement he titled “Why is [the] governor going after children?” Wenski pointed out that that former U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, City Commissioner Joe Carollo, several Catholic priests and numerous business and civic leaders all had entered the U.S. as unaccompanied refugee children as part of the iconic Operation Pedro Pan Cuban airlift.

READ MORE: DeSantis’ office takes credit for sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard

“Sixty years ago, parents did what was unthinkable,” Wenski wrote, “they sent their children alone and unaccompanied to the United States.”

“The governor’s executive order is wrong,” Wenski wrote. “The conditions that produce successive waves of unaccompanied minors, the unspeakable crimes that are committed against them as they journey from their homelands…cry out for justice. But where is the justice in blaming and punishing the victims?”

Fran Allegra, who oversaw the state’s efforts to shelter and care for unaccompanied children in the early 2000s, said the DeSantis administration’s shuttering of refugee children’s shelters and the flight of Venezuelan migrants this week to Massachusetts are part of “a broader plan to close Florida off from accepting any new immigrants regardless of the circumstances.”

“For decades, Florida participated in a successful federal program of temporarily housing and caring for unaccompanied minors who crossed the border alone. Many faith-based and community-based non-profits stepped up to assist the federal government and vulnerable children,” said Allegra, who headed the Our Kids foster care program from 2004 through 2014.

“This was an effective Florida program that efficiently used tax dollars to humanely treat victimized kids while streamlining the reunification of children and families. Having met children who make that dangerous trek within hours of their arrival, I can tell you that their stories are both compelling and horrifying.”

She added: “The last thing these kids need is to be shoved aside. This policy is unkind, uncharitable and inhumane.”

Isabel Vinent, who is the co-executive director of Florida Immigrant Coalition Votes, said DeSantis was “pandering” to voters in Iowa and other deeply red states with his attacks on immigrants, and failing to address the practical concerns of most Floridians.

“Gov. DeSantis is using children, he is using immigrants, he is using asylum seekers to distract from the real issues Floridians are struggling with, like the housing crisis, high insurance premiums and the rising cost of living,” Vinent said. “Those are the real issues Floridians are facing.”

The governor, Vinent said, “is allowing his political ambitions to drown out the real needs of Floridians. All this political theater is aimed at voters in Iowa for his presidential bid.”

“This is a war against immigrants, a war against immigrant children,” Vinent said.