A teenage boy from Afghanistan was forced to live in an ICE adult detention facility because the government believed he was an adult, based on a controversial piece of evidence and analysis.
An Afghan boy fleeing the Taliban arrives at the U.S. border, one month after his 15th birthday. He tells officials his real age and is placed in a juvenile shelter.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency responsible for the care and custody of unaccompanied minors, orders a dental age estimation analysis from a forensic odontologist. This dentist takes dental X-rays and compares the boy's third-molar development with reference studies to estimate his actual age.
The three reference studies used to assess the maturation of an Afghan boy are as follows.
Dental X-rays of third-molar development in African-American teens were contrasted against white-American teens. The probability of someone being at least 18 years old was evaluated for each developmental stage.
A study of Japanese juveniles set mean ages for different third molar developmental stages.
Third molar development in Hispanic children of largely Mexican descent living in Dallas and Cameron County — counties in North and South Texas, respectively — were compared to a 1993 study of third molar development in American Whites.
Using those three studies, the forensic odontologist concluded the boy's teeth indicated an age range between 16 and 22, with an estimated age of 19.
He was transferred from the juvenile shelter to the Eloy Detention Center, an adult ICE facility in the Arizona desert.