The U.S. government on Saturday housed about 15,500 unaccompanied migrant minors, including 5,000 teens and children stranded in border patrol facilities not designed for long-term custody, according to government data reviewed by CBS News.
As of Saturday morning, more than 5,000 minor minors were detained in a customs and border protection (CBP) tent facility in South Texas and other stations along the border with Mexico. According to government officials, unaccompanied children spend an average of 136 hours in CBP supervision, well beyond the 72-hour limit set out in U.S. law.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also houses nearly 10,500 unaccompanied children in emergency housing facilities and shelters licensed by countries to care for minors, Department Department Mark Mark Weber told CBS News on Saturday.
More than 9,400 juvenile delinquents entered U.S. border control last month, a record high for a February. That number is expected to darken according to the March figure, as border officials encountered an average of more than 500 unaccompanied minors a day over the past 21 days.
The refugee agency within HHS is accused of housing most underage minors until it can place them with relatives or other sponsors in the US, due to the large number of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border and the limited space in its state-licensed shelters , the U.S. refugee agency has been forced to open temporary housing facilities to get children out of Border Patrol supervision.
Eli Hartman / AP
HHS informed Congress on Saturday that it would open a new inflow facility in Pecos, Texas, which is expected to house about 500 unaccompanied children, according to a notice received by CBS News. According to HHS, the installation, a former residence for oil workers, could be expanded to 2,000 minors in the future.
The Pecos facility would become the fourth influx or emergency housing facility for underage minors opened by the Biden administration, trying to find accommodation for the rising number of children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border without parents or legal guardians . The Trump administration has used three influx facilities for migrant children over four years.
Last month, the U.S. Refugee Agency reopened an Trump-era influx facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas. With the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Refugee Office also converted a Dallas Convention Center and a camp for oil workers in Midland, Texas, into emergency shelters to receive unaccompanied teenagers trapped in Border Patrol facilities, most of whom was built to attract migrating men.
The figures checked by CBS News on Saturday show that the US government is still struggling to reduce the record high backlog of children in US border guards, even as it opens new housing facilities and increases bed capacity at state-licensed shelters.
“The incredible number of children in CBP supervision is heartbreaking and is very worrying,” Neha Desai, a lawyer representing minor minors in a rural court case, told CBS News.
Last week, Desai and her colleague at the National Center for Youth Law, Leecia Welch, interviewed minor minors held at the Border Patrol tent facility in Donna, Texas. According to Desai, the children reported taking turns sleeping on the floor overcrowded conditions; unable to call family members; and shower once in as many as seven days.
Desai said she believed “Biden’s government is committed to addressing the humanitarian situation we now face in a humane way, but that ‘time will tell whether the good intentions and hard work of the government will make the changes that are urgently needed. ‘
Paul Wise, a court-appointed doctor who oversees the conditions of migrant children in U.S. custody, told U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee on Friday that he had found “profound overcrowding” in the Donna detention facility and others. CBP stations in south Texas. he toured last week.
Wise warned that the overcrowded conditions were not ‘sustainable’, saying the holding capacity along the southern border could begin to unravel.
CBP said in a statement to CBS News that it was working to transfer unaccompanied minors to HHS shelters as soon as possible. The agency, said by Interior Minister Alejandro Mayorkas, said it was not intended to keep children long-term.
“Even a few hours in detention is more than we want for children who keep Border Patrol at the border,” the agency said in a statement.
Since the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) allowed shelters to relax social distance measures and return to the pre-pandemic in early March, the U.S. Refugee Office has reactivated more than 500 beds, an agency spokesman said. told CBS News earlier this week.
While the refugee agency is no longer considering using a military base in Virginia or a NASA facility in Northern California to house unaccompanied children, according to HHS spokesman Weber, it is still exploring other sites. evaluate.
Referring to a public health authority dating back to the late 19th century, the Trump administration summarily expelled thousands of unaccompanied children from the southern border without seeking asylum until a federal judge blocked the practice in November 2020.
While an appeals court overturned the judge’s order in late January, Biden’s government did not want to expel unaccompanied migrant children, calling the practice inhumane. The Biden administration continued to use the Trump-era public health edict to expel migrant adults and some families with children.
“We have made a different decision than the previous government,” Mayorkas told CBS This Morning on Thursday. “We do not put young children back in the environment of poverty and violence to which they are fleeing.”