UN expert corrects claim on children in US migration detention

An outside expert working with the UN human rights office has corrected a figure he cited claiming that over 100,000 children are being held in migrant detention in the United States.

On Monday, Manfred Nowak, who leads a UN Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty that was published this week, told reporters: “We have more than — still more than — 100,000 children in migration-related detention in the United States of America." The Associated Press and other major news organisations reported that figure.

But on Tuesday, he told The AP that figure was drawn from a UN refugee agency report citing data from 2015, the latest figure his team could find. That was under former US president Obama and before US President Donald Trump, whose policies on migration have drawn criticism, was elected.

Nowak also said the figure of over 100,000 referred to the cumulative number of migrant children held in detention at any point during that year, whether “for two days or eight months or the whole year,” not all simultaneously.

He reiterated, however, that the US is holding far more children than are other countries for which he has reliable figures.

New US government data released this month found 69,550 migrant children have been held in US government custody over the past year.

The US government didn’t respond to the questionnaire of Nowak’s team that asked governments to indicate both annual and date-specific numbers of migrant children in detention.