[liberationtech] Let's reunite the kids forcibly torn from their migrant parents

[Tim Schwartz]

Hi All,

I’ve been organizing the Missing Persons Community of Interest since after Haiti. We work on bringing together partners from govt (national/state/local/city…), tech, and humanitarian orgs to share lessons learned and strategies to approach reunification after disasters. We have a call later this week to discuss the current crisis in the USA. 

From all that I’ve heard so far, many NGOs are ready to act, but can’t without requests from the federal government (which isn’t asking for help). Some NGOs have put out statements but many are holding back because this is unfortunately a politically caused crisis. 

In terms of technology for reunification, the main problem (from my understanding) is that even within the US government there are multiple agencies using different systems for tracking. Data interoperability is always a problem (though it was been worked on extensively in the post-disaster systems), unfortunately because this is a politically caused situation there are no standard protocols to follow. 

Heather Blanchard wrote a good post - https://medium.com/@poplifegirl/dhs-hhs-orr-sidestepping-use-of-national-mass-care-strategy-to-avoid-transparency-and-access-de36d1788e72 <https://medium.com/@poplifegirl/dhs-hhs-orr-sidestepping-use-of-national-mass-care-strategy-to-avoid-transparency-and-access-de36d1788e72> - about a possible way for local emergency managers to flip the switch on considering this an emergency which would trigger multiple agency collaboration. Unfortunately ESF-6 will never be triggered from the top down in this case. 

I will keep you all posted of what transpires in our group.

Cheers,
Tim


> On Jun 25, 2018, at 11:42 PM, Catherine Forsman <cforsman at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Received an email back from a friend at the Red Cross. I asked him how they setup coordination efforts to reunite families during and after disasters. I wanted to see if there was any way to put all of us together to try to help. however, he says the Red Cross already volunteered to help and submitted it to the department of homeland security and they denied the offering of help. I asked him to please let me know how they setup things to reunite families after disasters anyway. I know there is paperwork, but perhaps it will be good information to know in case their process has any interesting or helpful bits of process. 
> 
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 10:39 PM, Yosem Companys <companys at tmp.ucsb.edu <mailto:companys at tmp.ucsb.edu>> wrote:
> Interesting. Thanks for the info, Andrés. Please keep us posted, should you hear any updates.
> 
> I've already reached out but have yet to receive a response. That said, I'm sure they're getting swamped with more important emails than mine (e.g., the families affected).
> 
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 2:57 PM, Andrés Leopoldo Pacheco Sanfuentes <alps6085 at gmail.com <mailto:alps6085 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> You can contact the following organization:
> 
> RAICES
> https://www.raicestexas.org/ <https://www.raicestexas.org/>
> They were actually working on an “intake app” not sure how far they went, with the permanent state of emergency we’re in in Texas regarding refugee families..
> 
> Regards / Saludos / Grato
> 
> Andrés Leopoldo Pacheco Sanfuentes
> 
> On Jun 20, 2018, at 4:00 PM, Yosem Companys <ycompanys at gmail.com <mailto:ycompanys at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>> That would be awesome! Thanks, Catherine.
>> 
>> On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 1:58 PM, Catherine Forsman <cforsman at gmail.com <mailto:cforsman at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Thank you for doing this! Let me contact someone I worked with volunteering after Karina and who has a lot of knowledge about the difficulties of coordinating separated families. The coordination effort is quite difficult, but perhaps, even if one child finds their parent, it is worth everything. 
>> 
>> Crowdsourcing is a very good way to think about it, and also mapping. 
>> 
>> Again, let me see if there is any advice I can gather from organizations that do this in how it could get off the ground quickly, even if they can simply let us know best practices. 
>> 
>> warm regards,
>> Catherine
>> 
>> On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 3:10 PM, Yosem Companys <ycompanys at gmail.com <mailto:ycompanys at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Note that I'm doing this in a personal capacity and NOT representing or speaking for Stanford in any way. 
>> 
>> This is just to kickoff a conversation...
>> 
>> Suzanne has obtained a domain name to host a database to keep track of all of the kids who have been forcibly removed from their parents. We need to track down 10K+ children at 100 shelters in 14 states: http://www.businessinsider.com/children-in-custody-trump-administration-immigration-zero-tolerance-policy-2018-5 <http://www.businessinsider.com/children-in-custody-trump-administration-immigration-zero-tolerance-policy-2018-5>.
>> 
>> As Suzanne suggests, we need to figure out how not to enable stalkers or deporting authorities while simultaneously helping the children find their parents, and vice versa. Suzanne suggests something along the lines of anonymous lost child posting: If tip gets added, connect to legal services to screen and verify. She also suggests connecting searching parents with legal services and with people who have tips but not involving law enforcement.
>> 
>> Christina suggests finding some good coders to scrape names off news articles. There are a lot of names already there.
>> 
>> Organizations that could help:
>> Southwest key. Christina says that Southwest key has a database of all of the kids but won't provide the info. Does anyone have a good contact there?
>> IRAP. Lina suggests contacting IRAP: https://refugeerights.org/ <https://refugeerights.org/>. Anybody have a contact there?
>> ACLU. Catherine suggests talking to the ACLU. I know we had several ACLU people on Liberationtech but from the tech angle. I don't know whether they're still on the list?
>> RAICES. Candace suggests we talk to RAICES. Anybody have a contact there?
>> I reckon that a massive crowdsourcing effort will be needed. Some crisis mapping might be useful.
>> 
>> A question for everyone on Liberationtech and related lists: How does this effort get off the ground quickly? 
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Yosem
>> 
>> 
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