The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is opening another facility for unaccompanied migrant children in Pecos, Texas, the Refugee Resettlement Office (ORR) announced on Saturday.
The Temporary Influx Care Facility will house at least 500 unaccompanied minors to start, with a capacity to house 2,000 children.
“While ORR has worked to increase its licensed bed capacity to almost 13,500 beds, additional capacity is urgently needed to manage improved COVID-19 mitigation strategies and the growing number of DHS UC referrals,” said a spokesperson. voice of the ORR.
“I was notified about an hour ago from HHS, that they are opening a new facility for unaccompanied minors in PECOS, which is in my district in western Texas. This facility will house between 500 to 2,000 unaccompanied minors, it looks like they are targeting fields of unused men. These are oil facilities where workers, temporary oil workers, live when they are operating in the oil gas industry, “said Representative Tony Gonzalez, R-Texas, on Fox News on Saturday. “There is no end in sight, I was told that there are two other facilities and they are also thinking about how to deal with this crisis is getting out of control.”
FIRST PHOTO INSIDE THE EL PASO MIGRANT CENTER OBTAINED BY FOX NEWS
The announcement of the new health center comes after the U.S. government stopped taking teenagers to a converted field for oil field workers, after more than 10% of the emergency center population tested positive for Covid-19.
Instead, the government on Wednesday took about 200 teenagers to another emergency location at the downtown Dallas convention center, which could expand to as many as 3,000 minors.
TEXAS GOV. ABBOT REPORTS COVID OUTBREAK, WITHOUT ‘USABLE RUNNING WATER’ IN THE MIGRANT HOLDING INSTALLATION
Approximately 4,500 unaccompanied children are waiting at the Border Patrol facilities to be served by HHS. From there, HHS works to find the sponsoring families for the children. HHS hurried to open places of detention across the country and tried to streamline its processes to release children in custody. About 9,500 minors are in the custody of HHS.
This week, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is meeting an average of 565 migrant children per day, against 313 last month. In 2019, border agents found 76,020 unaccompanied children for an average of just over 208 per day.
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Although families and single adults can still be expelled under Tile 42, a Trump-era coronavirus health order, no child will be expelled from the United States. The Biden government maintained the message that now “is not the time” to reach the border with the United States, but has so far refused to characterize the situation as a crisis.