Bureaucratic neglect: the paradoxical mistreatment of unaccompanied migrant children in the US immigration system

After release from immigrant detainment centres in the United States, a select group of unaccompanied immigrant children enter a community-based programme known as ‘post-release services’ (PRS) because of an identified vulnerability. Despite the name, post-release services do not confer actual services – only a referral for them. We use an intersectional lens to examine the tension for service providers within PRS policy between the rights of the child and the stigma and increasing criminalisation of being undocumented. This paper is based on document analysis of all public federal documents on unaccompanied children, ethnographic fieldwork in four PRS serving sites in the US, and interviews with 20 unaccompanied children, 17 sponsors, and 13 employees of the government subcontracting agency. Drawing on these unique data sets, we consider how age and legal status intersect in shaping the implementation of services for unaccompanied children and subsequent outcomes.