Amidst the news about the controversial practice of locking up immigrant childrenwhose parents are not U.S. citizens is the looming question of who will pay for these detentions.

Corrections facilities already face overcrowding and harsh conditions, and now we are seeing how the Trump administration plans to pay for all this: shifting funds from programs essential to some Americans’ lives, including HIV/AIDS programs.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provides social service programs ranging from affordable healthcare to Head Start, temporary cash assistance, food stamps, homeless and elder care, cancer and HIV/AIDS programs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health.

The agency also pays for the more than 13,000 children held in U.S. immigration detention facilities, and has recently come under fire for an inability to locate 1,500 children that were released over three months, leading to speculation as to the children’s whereabouts.

Now, these important, life-sustaining social programs face serious cuts as the Trump administration scrambles to pay for the deluge of immigrant children who have been detained alone in the U.S.

In just over one year, we have witnessed a previously unimaginable 550 percent increase in the number of detained children. The money will be diverted to the agency’s Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

The greatest moral outrage accompanied the news of the mass detention of immigrant children, and now we see the next layer of impact about this dramatic policy. Under these cuts, the most egregious cuts are in the area of HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention programs.

The HIV/AIDS community has been very vocally opposed to program cuts that support people living with the virus. "Any removal of federal HIV funding for purposes not related to caring for the 1.2 million people living with HIV in this country is unacceptable, but taking away federal HIV funding in order to detain immigrant children after separating them from their families is appalling and cannot be tolerated," said the nonprofit organization AIDS United.

The daily cost of operating these emergency detention facilities is $750 per child. In addition to more children being detained is the practice of using their release paperwork to locate and arrest adults. Under these conditions, if children are released, it is more likely to be to distant documented relatives who are not threatened by arrest.

Add to this the fact that teenagers released to supposed distant family members landed into the hands of traffickers that enslaved them at an Ohio egg farm. This resulted in policy changes that strengthened background checks for adults picking up detained children.

Cases like the trafficked teens led to new bureaucratic hurdles and requirements. In June, the HHS started sharing information from fingerprint submissions, "background checks, proofs of income and home visits" directly with Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE).

This kind of interagency collaboration serves as a serious deterrent to children’s release from custody, since detained children are handled by HHS and adults are handled by ICE.

The Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama reports that these policy changes are responsible for the soaring population of detained children. When the "Office of Refugee Resettlement started sharing information with ICE in June, two to four sponsors a week did not show up for appointments and a few who did visit refused to get fingerprinted."

Now, we see the impact of intersecting children’s health and safety issues as one notable long-term program, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program that "provides a comprehensive system of care that includes primary medical care and essential support services for people living with HIV who are uninsured or underinsured" faces budget cuts.

Just one year ago, the Trump administration made an effort to retain HIV/AIDS programs. Now, it looks like cuts will move forward amidst harsh criticism and serious concern for the adults and children impacted by this latest round of this "ideologically driven" funding scheme.