The Biden administration on Saturday instructed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help prosecute the growing number of unaccompanied migrant children entering U.S. border custody amid reports of overcrowding in the facilities.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that he ordered FEMA to help U.S. immigration officials receive and receive migrant minors crossing the southern border without parents or legal guardians for the next 90 days.
The deployment of FEMA officials illustrates the formidable logistical and humanitarian test facing the Biden administration on the U.S.-Mexico border due to a sharp increase in the number of migrant children detained in recent weeks.
About 9,500 unaccompanied minors, most from Central America, entered U.S. border custody in February, a maximum of 21 months. More than 7,000 of them were transferred to the U.S. refugee agency, which has been struggling to find enough bed in its shelter network. The shelters had previously operated at a reduced capacity due to the social distancing measures put in place due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
The reduced bed space in shelters of U.S. refugee agencies has created a massive backlog of minors in Border Patrol custody facilities, most built to briefly detain adult, not child, migrants. The number of children detained this week has averaged more than 3,000.
On Friday, CBS News reported that children detained at a South Texas Customs and Border Protection Center (CBP) told lawyers they were being held in crowded conditions. The children also reported that they had to sleep on the floor, that they could not call family members, that they had limited access to showers and that they did not see sunlight for almost a week.
In its announcement of the FEMA assignment, Mayorkas acknowledged that its department’s border facilities are not suitable for housing minors.
“I am incredibly proud of the Border Patrol officers, who have been working 24 hours a day in difficult circumstances to care for children temporarily in our care,” Mayorkas said. “Still, as I’ve said many times, a border patrol facility is not a place for a child.”
CBS News has requested access to the Migrant Exploitation Facility in Donna, Texas.
A FEMA spokesman told CBS News that the agency is working with the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the refugee agency, to “rapidly expand the capacity of a safe and adequate shelter and provide food, water and basic medical care “.
Mayorkas said U.S. border officials are working to move unaccompanied minors to the refugee office “as quickly as possible,” but noted that the task is being complicated by the pandemic.
In addition to the deployment of FEMA, Mayorkas said officials from other agencies in the Department of Homeland Security, including the U.S. Federal Protection Service and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), were also providing assistance with operations and shelter security.
In 2014, the Obama administration took advantage of FEMA to monitor the government’s response to a record number of Central American children crossing the southern border of the United States without parents.
While the Biden administration has so far continued to rely on a public health authority invoked by the Trump administration to quickly expel most migrant adults and some families without a court hearing, it has allowed unaccompanied children to continue. its processes in the U.S., as mentioned by U.S. law.
Republicans have said the increase in the number of children crossing the border only comes from the Biden administration’s policy changes and its commitments to undo Trump-era asylum restrictions.
On Saturday, however, DHS said the marked increase in border crossings could be attributed to poverty, violence and food insecurity in Central America, which is also recovering from two devastating consecutive hurricanes that made landfall in the fall. past.
Nicole Sganga contributed to the reports.