The U.S. government on Saturday housed about 15,500 unaccompanied migrant minors, including 5,000 teenagers and children stranded at 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 unaccompanied minors were detained at a customs and border protection (CBP) store in central Texas and other stations on the border with Mexico. According to government records, unaccompanied children spend an average of 136 hours in CBP custody, well beyond the 72-hour limit set by U.S. law.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) also housed about 10,500 unaccompanied children in state-sponsored emergency housing facilities and shelters to care for minors, department spokesman Mark Weber told CBS News on Saturday .
More than 9,400 unaccompanied minors entered U.S. border custody last month, a record for the month of February. This number is it is expected to be overshadowed according to the March data, as border officials have encountered an average of more than 500 unaccompanied minors a day in the past 21 days, according to government data.
The HHS refugee agency is accused of housing most unaccompanied minors until it can place them with family members or other sponsors in the U.S. Due to the high number of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border and limited bed space in their state-licensed shelters. the U.S. refugee agency has been forced to open makeshift housing facilities to take children out of Border Patrol custody.
Eli Hartman / AP
On Saturday, HHS notified Congress that it would open a new influx facility in Pecos, Texas, which is initially expected to house approximately 500 unaccompanied children, according to a notice obtained by CBS News. HHS said the facility, a former housing facility for oil workers, could be expanded in the future to house up to 2,000 minors.
The Pecos facility would become the fourth influx or emergency housing facility for unaccompanied minors opened by the Biden administration, which is struggling to find a bed for the growing number of children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border without parents or legal guardians. The Trump administration used three influx facilities for migrant children for four years.
Last month, the U.S. refugee agency reopened a Trump-era influx facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas. With the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the refugee office has also turned a Dallas convention center and a camp for oil workers in Midland, Texas, into emergency places to receive teens. unaccompanied trapped at the Border Patrol facilities, most of whom detained migrant men.
Figures revised by CBS News on Saturday show that the US government continues to fight to reduce the cumulative registration of children in US border custody, although it opens new housing facilities and expands the capacity of beds in shelters with state license.
“The staggering number of children in CBP’s custody is both heartbreaking and deeply troubling,” Neha Desai, a lawyer representing migrant minors in a major court case, told CBS News.
Last week, Desai and her partner at the National Center for Youth Law, Leecia Welch, interviewed juvenile migrants who were at the patrol border store in Donna, Texas. According to Desai, the children reported that they had gone back to sleep on the floor due to massification conditions; not being able to call family members; and showering once every seven days.
Desai said he believes “the Biden administration is committed to humanely addressing the humanitarian situation we face,” but that “time will tell if the good intentions and hard work of the government will translate into the changes that are urgently needed.” “.
On Friday, Paul Wise, a court-appointed doctor accused of overseeing the conditions facing migrant children in U.S. custody, told U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee that he found a “deep crowding” at Donna’s facilities and other CBP stations in South Texas that toured last week.
Wise warned that overcrowding conditions were not “sustainable,” and said retention capacity along the southern border could begin to fall apart.
CBP told CBS News in a statement that it is working to move unaccompanied minors to HHS shelters “as quickly as we can.” Echoing statements by National Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the agency said the Border Patrol facilities “are not intended to support children in the long term.”
“Even a few hours of detention is more than we want for the children that the Border Patrol apprehends at the border,” the agency said in a statement.
Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allowed shelters to relax social distancing measures and return to pre-pandemic capacity in early March, the U.S. refugee office has reactivated more than 500 beds, an agency spokesman told CBS News earlier this week.
Although the refugee agency no longer plans to use a military base in Virginia or a NASA facility in northern California to house unaccompanied children, it is still evaluating other locations, according to Weber, a spokesman for the United States. HHS.
Citing a public health authority dating back to the late 19th century, the Trump administration briefly expelled thousands of unaccompanied children from the southern border without allowing them to seek asylum until a federal judge blocked the practice in November. of 2020.
While an appeals court lifted the judge’s order in late January, the Biden administration refused to expel unaccompanied migrant children, calling the practice inhumane. The Biden administration has continued to use the Trump-era public health edict to expel migrant adults and some families with children.
“We made a different decision from the previous administration,” Mayorkas told CBS This Morning on Thursday. “We do not expel young children to an environment of poverty and violence from which they flee.”