MIRC staff provided know-your-rights presentations in the children’s best language. Over a roughly seven-month period, MIRC staff proudly served 790 unaccompanied children at the EIS located in Albion, MI. During the early days of 2022, the EIS became inactive, and MIRC is not aware of plans to place children at the site at this time. Against the backdrop of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, MIRC bore witness to the experiences of a large population of Central American children, and later approximately 200 Afghan children who were fleeing violence.
Accordingly, MIRC engaged with the goal of securing proper care in the least restrictive environment possible, as well as providing high quality legal services, for the children that would pass through Michigan’s EIS. In other states where EIS operations have been more commonplace, advocates have identified concerns about the conditions in which children are being housed. EIS facilities are considered in the unaccompanied children framework as a resource for temporary shelter when an unusually high number of children overwhelms system resources. For the first time in Michigan’s history as a receiving state for unaccompanied children, an Emergency Intake Site (EIS) was located in the state beginning in late Spring 2021 (more about the opening here).
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