The Biden administration will transform two Texas facilities where families of detained migrants are held in Ellis Island-style rapid processing centers, meaning that adults and children crossing the border will be accommodated for a maximum of 72 hours before being released In the USA.
In a lawsuit on Friday, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said families will remain detained in a 2,400-bed detention center in Karnes City and an 839-bed detention center in Dilley, Texas, but the government of the USA intends to keep adults and children in these locations for three days or less.
Families of migrants previously detained in a third unit, the 96-bed Berks County family detention center in Leesport, Pennsylvania, have all been released, according to the ICE disclosure made on Friday in Flores’ decades-long process. moved on behalf of migrant children. Instead, this detention center will be used by ICE to support adults.
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All three family detention centers were opened when now President Biden was Vice President of President Barack Obama. While running for president, Biden promised to release detained families.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security has preliminary plans to turn the two facilities in South Texas into rapid processing centers with the aim of examining 100 families a day, The Washington Post first reported, citing internal emails describing the changes not previously disclosed.
A family of migrants crosses the border to El Paso, Texas, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Friday, February 26, 2021. (AP Photo / Christian Chavez)
The number of unaccompanied minors and families arriving at the United States’ border with Mexico this year “should be the highest number seen in more than 20 years,” wrote Russell Hott, a senior ICE official, in an email sent to team members on Thursday.
Even if the two facilities in South Texas are turned into fast-processing centers, this “may not be enough to keep pace with the seizures,” warned Hott in the email analyzed by the Post. And those who cannot be accommodated in these centers even for 72 hours will be transferred to nearby hotels.
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ICE’s MVM contractor will transport families that cannot be accommodated in these hotel facilities, and the company plans to select hotels in McAllen, El Paso and Phoenix, Arizona, Hott wrote.
The detention centers in Dilley and Karnes will serve as quick release facilities, where unaccompanied minors and families will be subjected to background checks and released before preliminary court hearings, unidentified DHS officials told the Post. Some migrants would enroll in alternatives to detention, such as ankle monitoring programs.
Anyone with a positive result would be quarantined for 10 days, officials said. Nonprofit partners would work to arrange plane and bus tickets to their final destinations in the United States, usually to stay with relatives or friends while awaiting their court hearings.
In an article published by Fox News on Friday, Thomas Homan, the former acting director of the ICE under the Trump administration argued that Biden’s team created a border crisis in “record time”, ending the administration’s achievements Trump in the first 40 days since the day of the inauguration.
Homan said illegal crossings on the southern border were at historic levels when Trump stepped down, an achievement achieved in part through agreements with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. He credited Trump for the Stay in Mexico Program, as well as the border wall to delay illegal entry into the U.S. and the Title 42 designation that would require most illegal aliens to be immediately returned to Mexico because of the COVID pandemic.
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Homan said Biden’s reversal of most Trump policies is “facilitating illegal entry” into the United States. The Biden administration is also being criticized by Republicans for considering changing the names of some facilities on the border to “reception centers” to communicate a message that people will go to. quickly be released, reported the Washington Examiner.
But lawyers working with detained immigrant families welcomed the new 72-hour release plans and credited the Biden government for announcing the change. They noted that even shorter hospital stays can be harmful to children.
A family of migrants crosses the border to El Paso, Texas, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Friday, February 26, 2021. (AP Photo / Christian Chavez)
“Family detention will never really end until the facilities are closed and contracts with ICE are over,” Bridget Cambria, executive director of the legal group Aldea – The People’s Justice Center, told the Associated Press.
The Biden government has already released several asylum-seeking families who had been detained for a year or more in Texas and, in some cases, arrived just hours after deportation. These families will continue with their cases as long as they remain subject to ICE monitoring.
In his early days, Biden has faced an increasing number of unaccompanied families and children crossing the border from the United States to Mexico, leading to scarcity of space in the Border Patrol detention cells and long-term facilities for operated children. for Health and Human Services. In the case of the Border Patrol, hundreds of children in the past few weeks have been detained for more than 72 hours, the general limit set by the agency’s standards.
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Biden interrupted the practice initiated by former President Donald Trump of expelling unaccompanied immigrant children under public health authority. The authorities expelled thousands of children to their countries of origin without giving them the chance to seek asylum or other protections under federal law.
The Biden government continues to expel immigrant families and adults.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.