The Unaccompanied Alien Children program (UAC), operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), provides temporary housing, food, clothing, and other related services to unaccompanied minor children in its custody. In 2018, OIG announced that the agency would rapidly deploy multidisciplinary teams to conduct site visits at ORR-funded facilities nationwide to review the care and well-being of all children residing in these facilities, including the subset of children who were separated due to the zero-tolerance policy. As part of this body of work, OIG also reviewed HHS program data and interviewed HHS staff, officials, and senior leadership to understand how HHS identified and tracked separated children. In three weeks, more than 200 OIG staff completed multi-day site visits to 45 ORR-funded facilities across the country. A series of reports are being released as a result of the site visits.
View an interactive timeline of these events. (Text-based version)
Resources
- OIG UAC Reports
- News Release: HHS OIG: ORR-funded facilities experienced challenges addressing the mental health needs of children in HHS custody and obstacles hiring, screening employees
- Eye On Oversight Special Edition: Challenges to Addressing Mental Health Needs of Children in the UAC Program
- Eye on Oversight Special Edition: Employee Screenings in the UAC Program
Last updated August 25, 2020