WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – Biden administration heads to Federal Emergency Management Agency to help manage and care for record number of unaccompanied immigrant children illegally crossing the border into Mexico in the States Units.
FEMA will support a government effort over the next three months to safely receive, shelter, and relocate minor children arriving alone on the southwestern U.S. border without parents or other adults, the National Security Secretary said Saturday. Alejandro Mayorkas.
Government figures show a growing border crisis, as hundreds of children enter the United States daily from Mexico and are detained.
The Department of Homeland Security is supposed to process and transfer unaccompanied minors to the Department of Health and Human Services within three days so that they can be located with a parent already living in the United States or another appropriate sponsor, until immigration cases can be resolved.
But there are more children being held longer at border patrol facilities that were not designed with care in mind because the long-term shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services have almost no capacity to house them. Children are detained daily at rates much higher than HHS can release to parents or sponsors.
Mayorkas said FEMA is working with the Department of Human Services and Health to “examine all available options to quickly expand physical capacity for adequate accommodation.”
“Our goal is to ensure that unaccompanied children are transferred to HHS as quickly as possible, in accordance with legal requirements and in the best interest of the children,” Mayorkas said.
During a record influx of unaccompanied minors in 2014, the Obama administration also turned to FEMA for help coordinating the government-wide response. During this crisis, FEMA helped build temporary shelters and processing stations at military bases.
President Joe Biden has put an end to the Trump-era practice of deporting immigrant children who cross the border alone, but has maintained expulsions of immigrant families and single adults.
Although his administration has tried to dissuade immigrants from entering the United States, many believe they are more likely now that Biden is president.
There have also been growing reports of parents sending their children alone to the border while staying in Mexico or Central America.
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Associated Press writer Nomaan Merchant in Houston contributed to this report.