US border authorities held more than 5,000 unaccompanied immigrant children in their custody at the end of this week, according to government data analyzed by BuzzFeed News, the latest sign that the number of children arriving at the border continues to increase.
The Biden administration has struggled to quickly transfer children from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody to shelters and centers operated by the Department of Human and Health Services (HHS).
Many of the children have been in CBP stations and facilities for more than 72 hours, which is the limit set by the government for children in custody. In recent weeks, government officials have struggled to increase the capacity of shelters as an effort to reduce overcrowding in border patrol custody.
Earlier this week, HHS opened an emergency entrance site specifically for minors at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. The new center aims to put children in an environment better suited to their needs, according to government officials. The decision came just days after the agency opened a separate emergency site in Midland, Texas.
HHS officials were also opening a new website, they revealed on Saturday. The agency will open the Target Lodge Pecos North property as an “influx care center” for children – it can accommodate around 500 children and can be expanded to accommodate 2,000.
On Friday, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators visited border facilities along with Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“I just met four teenagers who made the long journey to America – one from Chile; another fleeing a violent home – in search of a better life. They looked exhausted, hopeful. Remember, each “unaccompanied minor” is a human being with a history, ” tweeted Democratic Senator Chris Murphy.
“I just left the border processing facility. Hundreds of children huddled in large open rooms. In a corner, I fought back tears as a 13-year-old girl sobbed uncontrollably, explaining through a translator how terrified she was of being separated from her grandmother and without her parents, ”he later said. added.
US officials have failed to keep pace with the increase in unaccompanied children at the border as they try to release them to shelters and facilities run by HHS, which also have no beds. The border situation has become the latest challenge to President Joe Biden’s efforts to undo the immigration policies established by his predecessor.
Although the government continues to refuse the majority of immigrants on the southern border under Title 42, a Trump-era order that cited the threat of the spread of the coronavirus, unaccompanied children have been the exception.
“We are on our way to find more individuals on the southwestern border than in the past 20 years. We are expelling most single adults and families. We are not expelling unaccompanied children,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of homeland security, in a statement on Tuesday.
He added that they were meeting many children at the border, including “children aged six and seven, for example, arriving at our border without an adult”.
Unaccompanied children from Central America who are picked up by Border Patrol agents are usually sent to the Refugee Resettlement Office, where they are housed in shelters across the country when they begin to officially apply for asylum and wait to meet with their families in the US .