WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) – The Biden administration is turning to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help manage and care for a record number of unaccompanied immigrant children who are migrating to the United States when illegally crossing the border with Mexico.
FEMA will support a government effort over the next three months to securely receive, shelter and transfer minor children who arrive alone to the southwestern border of the United States without a parent or other adult, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Saturday .
Government data shows a growing crisis on the border, as hundreds of children from Mexico illegally enter the United States daily and are taken into custody.
The Department of Homeland Security must process and transfer unaccompanied minor children to the Department of Health and Human Services within three days so that they can be placed with a parent who already lives in the United States, or another suitable sponsor, until their immigration cases may be resolved.
However, more children are being kept on longer at the Border Patrol facilities that were not designed with their care in mind, because the long-term shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services are barely able to accommodate them. Children are being apprehended daily at rates much higher than what HHS can release them to parents or sponsors.
Mayorkas said that FEMA is working with the Department of Health and Human Services to “examine all options available to rapidly expand physical capacity for adequate accommodation”.
“Our goal is to ensure that unaccompanied children are transferred to HHS as soon as possible, in accordance with legal requirements and in the best interests of the children,” said Mayorkas.
During a record influx of unaccompanied minors in 2014, the Obama administration also turned to FEMA to help coordinate the response across the government. During the crisis, FEMA helped erect temporary shelters and processing stations on military bases.
President Joe Biden ended the Trump era’s practice of expelling immigrant children who cross the border on their own, but maintained expulsions from immigrant families and single adults.
Although his government tried to prevent immigrants from entering the United States, many believe they have a better chance now that Biden is president.
There are also growing reports of parents sending their children across the border alone while in Mexico or Central America.
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Associated Press editor Nomaan Merchant of Houston contributed to this report.