East Harlem shelter detaining immigrant children visited by de Blasio

They were separated from their parents, shipped across the country and, for the last two months, secretly spent their days in an East Harlem foster care center alone and afraid.

But now, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would work hard to get the 239 separated immigrant children staying in that facility back to their parents as soon as possible.

“These children are coming here, and the professionals we met with made clear that this has been a traumatic process for a lot of these kids,” he said.

The mayor visited the Cayuga Center on Park Avenue on Wednesday afternoon following an NY1 morning report that showed young Latina girls enter and exit the facility around midnight. The 40-minute visit took place just as President Donald Trump signed an executive order rescinding his controversial policy of separating children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, but de Blasio said the mental damage on the children already was severe.

The facility, which is one of several undisclosed nonprofits in New York City contracted by the federal government to supervise the separated children, has taken in 350 kids since the policy began in May. The youngest child to be brought to the center was 9 months old, according to the mayor.

“We’re talking about children who can barely communicate, have no idea what’s happening to them, [and] no ability to be in touch with their families,” de Blasio said.

The Cayuga Center was not used to house children overnight so they were sent to foster families, according to the mayor’s office, which did not learn about the arrangement between the nonprofit and the federal government until the NY1 report.

The city’s Administration for Children’s Services said the agency oversees foster care and foster homes due to child abuse and neglect, not cases conducted through federal contracts.

ACS Commissioner David Hansell, who toured the facility with the mayor, said they did not know Wednesday evening when or how the displaced children residing in the city would be reunited with their parents now that Trump had signed the order reversing the child separation portion of the zero tolerance immigration policy.

“This is something that’s determined by the federal government. We have no involvement in the unaccompanied children program,” he said.

The mayor said he lacked confidence in the president’s latest move, but he would do everything in his power to find the children’s parents and reunite them.

“This president has changed his mind on so many things so many times. I will believe it when we see the results, when all of these families are reunited,” he said.

Cayuga didn’t return messages for comment, but de Blasio said they were cooperating with the city.

“This is an organization that we know and the city of New York has worked with them all of the time . . . but we want to monitor the situation closely,” the mayor said.

He said some of the children had physical ailments, including chickenpox and bedbugs, but they were treated by the nonprofit’s staff. The mayor said nonprofit’s facility did not mirror the conditions seen in images of child detention centers in border states.

The classroom he visited in the center had three teachers attending to 40 children, most from Guatemala.

Members from ACS and the city’s Department of Health will be working with Cayuga while they oversee the 239 children. NYPD officers also were sent to the facility to protect staff because of threats issued against them.

City Councilman Mark Levine said his office would accept donations starting Thursday of clothing, diapers and other materials for the children at the Cayuga Center.

In the meantime, more city officials are pressing to get more answers from other facilities. City Councilman Francisco Moya and 22 other council members sent a letter to federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Lutheran Social Services and Catholic Guardian Services requesting a tour of three Bronx facilities that allegedly also house the separated children.

“Legislators and the press must be allowed access to the facilities in our city and state where children who were torn from their families are now being detained,” Moya said in a statement.

De Blasio planned to visit a child detention center in Tornillo, Texas on Thursday morning with the United Conference of Mayors. He encouraged New Yorkers to continue to speak out against the Trump administration and demand the full truth about how many kids were separated.

“What is happening here? How is it possible that none of us knew there were 239 kids here in the city? Why is the federal government holding back that information from the city?” an outraged de Blasio said.