{"id":599907,"date":"2018-07-03T16:31:54","date_gmt":"2018-07-03T22:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=599907"},"modified":"2018-07-04T08:14:13","modified_gmt":"2018-07-04T14:14:13","slug":"detained-migrant-parents-have-to-pay-to-call-their-family-members-some-cant-afford-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/07\/detained-migrant-parents-have-to-pay-to-call-their-family-members-some-cant-afford-to\/","title":{"rendered":"Detained migrant parents have to pay to call their family members. Some can’t afford to."},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tornillo\"

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services<\/p>

Children at the tent city erected in Tornillo make phone calls while supervised by a staff member. The faces are blurred in the government-issued photograph.<\/p><\/div>\n

After fleeing crime and extortion abroad, some migrant parents separated from their children in the U.S. have found themselves facing what critics call another shakedown, this time inside American detention centers: usurious phone rates and bureaucratic hassles to contact their family members.<\/p>\n

Though government officials<\/a> say migrant children in federal custody are offered twice-weekly phone calls with their parents, lawyers and advocates say many detainees remain cut off from family and friends and have yet to hear from children taken from them weeks ago.<\/p>\n

They are stymied by long wait times, confusing instructions, dropped calls and, for cash-poor migrants, the cost \u2013 which can top 20 cents per minute and has <\/b>been criticized as exorbitant.<\/p>\n

One Guatemalan mother, now suing the government for taking her children away from her, wrote in a June 22 court filing<\/a> that she had heard from her 2-, 6- and 13-year-old sons a handful of times since they\u2019d been separated in May, and that \u201cthe calls are very expensive, so I am only able to call when I have money.\u201d<\/p>\n