The humanitarian crisis on our nation’s southern border is gut-wrenching, shameful, and immoral. The images of children alone in vacant Walmarts, and toddlers being ordered into court alone for deportation proceedings, shock most Americans. So much so that people across the country took to the streets last month to protest this cruel policy. The president’s recent executive order mandating children stay with their parents has only created chaos and confusion for both the families that have been separated and for those still arriving at the border.



As a humanitarian worker and lawyer, I lead a team of attorneys supporting legal rights for unaccompanied minors in New York and provide legal services to the largest shelter for “tender age” children in the nation. The children we represent come from all over the world, and our case load has swollen dramatically over the past few months.



As desperate as the situation may seem, there’s some good news in all this mess: the crisis is unnecessary. We can solve this problem by processing these families through our country’s under-utilized Refugee Resettlement Program.



Because our refugee resettlement system is atrophying due to the lack of refugee families being brought in from camps around the world, it can easily handle the current crisis.



That’s because the US has long taken in tens of thousands of refugees each year. The previous administration resettled more than 80,000 per year from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other war-torn countries. Under Presidents Ronald Regan and George H W Bush, the average was closer to 110,000. But this year, we will resettle fewer than 22,000 refugees, the lowest number in 40 years.



Now, in some cruel twist of irony, the number of refugees the Refugee Resettlement Program is prepared to accept almost parallels the number of asylum seekers at our borders. And don’t be misled by rhetoric that these are all criminals—before the family separation policy went into effect, 95% of these families were passing “credible fear” interviews establishing that they were seeking asylum for valid reasons.



Now the executive order signed by President Trump mandates that, rather than separating parents from their children, families seeking asylum will be detained together. But detaining immigrant families is not only inhumane, it commands an enormous amount of resources. According to the National Immigration Forum, in FY 2018 the government is set to spend about $8 million per day on immigrant detention. This amounts to $208 per detainee per day. Conversely, “alternatives to detention” programs cost between $5 and $6 per person per day and immigrants appear at their final hearings more than 95 percent of the time. The Refugee Resettlement Program is perfectly suited to provide such an alternative.



This would mean the end of the zero-tolerance policy of criminally prosecuting migrants. In its place, Refugee Resettlement would use existing programming to help migrants find housing, learn English, enroll children in schools, and respect American values and freedoms. These programs, operated mostly through faith-based non-profits like Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, are located in cities and rural areas, effectively dispersing a large number of refugees to areas that need labor and can support new settlers.



Refugee resettlement agencies are well-equipped to provide support to traumatized families. Studies have shown that within a short period of time, refugees are not only able to support themselves but also more than reimburse the money they receive in support during their first few years in the US through taxes and generation of income and jobs.



The choice is not, as President Trump declared, between detaining families and quickly deporting them, or paroling them with no accountability. Using the resources and programs we have developed over the past century to help refugees, we can welcome asylum seekers humanely and ensure they are properly vetted. Refugee resettlement services have case managers, teachers, and supportive staff that will be monitoring each family. Those who lose their asylum claim may still be deported. Those who win will already be integrating into their communities.



As a nation, we face a critical decision: do we punish migrants at our borders and treat them so miserably that new migrants will no longer view the US as a beacon of freedom and refuge? Or do we embrace families fleeing oppressive and dysfunctional regimes, provide them with support and kindness as they present their claims for asylum, and fight for their right to live legally amongst us?



We have long held to the latter path and should embrace it now.



Jodi Ziesemer is the supervising attorney for the Unaccompanied Minors Program at Catholic Charities Community Services

