A facility in Houston where girls who crossed the border into the United States alone is being closed and minors were removed immediately, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported. ) on Saturday.
Some 450 girls have remained in an Unaccompanied Children’s Emergency Admission Center (EIS) since April 1, operated by the National Association of Christian Churches (NAACC). from Bush Intercontinental Airport.
“The NACC EIS in Houston and other Emergency Admission Centers are being used as a temporary measure,” HHS said in a statement.
Representatives of FIDEL, a Houston-based immigrant rights group, praised the eviction of the girls, who according to FIDEL director Cesar Espinosa are between 13 and 17 years old, although they questioned the reasons for the measure.
Espinosa said an incident was reported at the center on Friday night and a FIDEL employee saw police and ambulances outside the site, but was unable to determine what had happened.
“There seemed to be a lot of confusion about what was going on,” said Espinosa, who translated the description of the scene narrated into Spanish by employee Alain Cisneros. “People there seemed to be in a sad posture, with their heads down and seemed to wipe away tears.”
Houston police have not yet responded to a phone call Saturday seeking statements on the matter. And a call to the National Association of Christian Churches was not answered.
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Espinosa, who had toured the center, said the girls were housed in a warehouse.
“There was really no room for social distancing … They were only allowed to get up from their cot so they could go to the bathroom and showers,” he added.
“The whole litter was for temporary use. The showers were temporary, the bathrooms were temporary, so this space was not equipped to accommodate anyone, much less girls,” Espinosa noted.
The HHS indicated that about 130 of the girls have plans to be handed over to a sponsor, usually one of their parents or a relative, and the Refugee Resettlement Office (ORR) will seek to find a sponsor to to the remaining minors.
Texas child welfare officials said they recently received three reports of alleged abuse and neglect at a facility in San Antonio that houses more than 1,600 immigrant teens who crossed the southern border.
Last month, the U.S. government stopped taking immigrant teens to a center in Midland amid questions about the safety of these emergency facilities.
The HHS has hastily opened large facilities to house migrant children in the southwest amid a marked increase in the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border. The agency’s lack of capacity during the increase in border crossings at the start of President Joe Biden’s government caused minors to wait sometimes for weeks in crowded and unfit Border Patrol centers.