Human Rights Watch published some suggestions that one can do to help attenuate the problems with the border detention of children and innocent people simply seeking asylum and refuge—some from war-torn, deathly-violent, hunger-stricken and/or drug cartel-infested conditions. Here are four things you can ask the US Congress to do now:

1. End family separation.

Yes, it’s still happening. Congress can and should require US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to stop separating kids from parents and extended family members like grandmothers, aunts, and older siblings – people who are in many cases their caregivers.

This means also asking Congress to insist US agencies expedite family reunifications.

2. Make sure funding for CBP and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is responsible for long-term care of unaccompanied children and those separated from their families, is conditional on the agencies’ adherence to strict protection standards for children.

That means detention time limits in holding cells with toothbrushes, soap, showers, and mattresses for children while they’re in those holding cells.

3. Fund community-based alternatives to detention for kids who can’t immediately be placed with  family members.

That includes foster care arrangements and small, state-licensed group homes for teens, with appropriate supervision by social workers.

Lastly…

4. Write child rights protections into law and ensure the law is followed.

CBP and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, have consistently treated their own standards as optional and disregarded court orders. They’ve just proposed regulations that would give them even more discretion to detain children indefinitely  in abusive conditions. What’s needed is a statute on the books and a way to compel compliance.