Care under pressure: Policy contradictions of speedy release, safety, and placement suitability in ORR-contracted programs for unaccompanied migrant children

In recent years, record-breaking numbers of young people arriving at the US-Mexico border have entered US government custody as unaccompanied migrant children. Whereas prior research has focused on the experiences of these young people while in custody and following release, limited scholarship has examined the experiences of human service professionals working within programs contracted by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to care for unaccompanied youth while they are in government custody. In these programs, social workers, mental health clinicians, medical coordinators, educators, and transitional foster parents collaborate to provide care for minors while assessing the safety and suitability of post-release placements. This article draws on 65 in-depth interviews with human service workers in ORR-contracted programs across four states to examine how they conceptualize policies that shape care for unaccompanied children during this transitional period. We focus on how two legal and policy frameworks—the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008—refract through highly politicized and mediatized bureaucracies of care and control to structure how human service providers understand their work. We suggest institutional pressures to accelerate time to release are often at odds with professional care ethics, and that this tension risks compromising care for young people in their care as well as the sustainability of the human service workforce in ORR-contracted organizations.