On Saturday, the Biden administration instructed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help prosecute the growing number of unaccompanied migrant children entering custody at the United States’ border amid reports of overcrowding in detention facilities.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has announced that he has ordered FEMA to help US immigration authorities receive and shelter migrant minors crossing the southern border without parents or legal guardians for the next 90 days.
The deployment of FEMA employees illustrates the formidable logistical and humanitarian test that the Biden government is facing on the border of the United States with Mexico due to a huge increase in the number of migrant children being taken into custody in recent weeks.
Nearly 9,500 unaccompanied minors, most of them from Central America, entered custody at the U.S. border in February – a record 21 months. More than 7,000 of them have been transferred to the United States refugee agency, which has been struggling to find enough bedding in its shelter network. The shelters previously functioned with reduced capacity due to the social distance measures implemented due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The diminishing space for beds in the shelters of United States refugee agencies has created a large accumulation of minors in the Border Patrol’s detention facilities, most of which were built to briefly detain adult migrants, not children. The number of children held in custody by the Border Patrol this week averaged more than 3,000.
On Friday, CBS News reported that children detained in a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) control facility in southern Texas told lawyers they were being kept in overcrowded conditions. The children also reported having to sleep on the floor, not being able to call family members, having limited access to the shower and not seeing the sun for almost a week.
In his announcement of the FEMA assignment, Mayorkas acknowledged that his department’s border control facilities are inadequate to house minors.
“I am extremely proud of the Border Patrol agents, who have been working around the clock in difficult circumstances to care for children temporarily in our care,” said Mayorkas. “However, as I have said many times, the Border Patrol facilities are not a place for a child.”
CBS News has requested access to the migrant detention 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 for safe and appropriate shelter and provide food, water and medical care. basic “.
Mayorkas said US border officials are working to transfer unaccompanied minors to the refugee office “as soon as possible,” but he noted that the task is being complicated by the pandemic.
In addition to the FEMA deployment, Mayorkas said employees from other agencies in the Department of Homeland Security, including the Federal Protective Service and the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), also provided assistance in shelter and security operations.
In 2014, the Obama administration turned to FEMA to oversee the government’s response to the record number of Central American children crossing the southern border of the United States without their parents.
Although 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 their procedures in the U.S., as described by US law.
Republicans said the increase in the number of children crossing the border alone stems from changes in the Biden government’s policy and its promises to undo Trump-era asylum restrictions.
On Saturday, however, DHS said the sharp increase in border crossings can be attributed to poverty, violence and food insecurity in Central America, which is also recovering from two devastating consecutive hurricanes that hit the coast last fall.
Nicole Sganga contributed reporting.