More than 3,200 migrant children were stranded at the Border Patrol facilities on Monday, with almost half kept beyond the legal three-day limit, while the Biden government struggles to respond to the sharp increase in the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the US-Mexico border.
According to government documents obtained by CBS News, some 1,400 unaccompanied minors have been held in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody facilities for more than three days since Monday, despite the agency’s legal obligation to transfer these children. to shelters operated by the US refugee agency within 72 hours after taking them into custody.
Nearly 170 unaccompanied children held in custody by the Border Patrol are under the age of 13, according to CBP documents.
On February 21, CBP kept just nine unaccompanied children beyond the three-day limit, according to a document, highlighting how the reduced space for beds in refugee agency shelters created a huge backlog of minors waiting in facilities that were designed to briefly detain adult men.
As of Monday, the Refugee Resettlement Office had only about 500 beds available near the southern border for the growing number of migrant children in US custody, according to a document from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ), which oversees the refugee agency.
A former employee of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the current number of children in custody of the Border Patrol is the highest in the agency’s history.
Border patrol posts, which migrants dubbed “kennels” and “ice boxes”, have concrete block cells designed to temporarily contain adult migrants. CBP is also keeping unaccompanied children in a large, soft-sided facility in South Texas that has more space and accommodation than border patrol stations; although it is also designed for short-term custody.
The refugee office is currently housing more than 8,100 unaccompanied children as it works to expand its bed capacity, which had been restricted during the pandemic to implement social detachment.
The documents obtained by CBS News illustrate the escalating humanitarian, logistical and political challenges that President Biden is facing on the US-Mexico border at the beginning of his presidency. Republicans blamed Biden’s immigration policies and rhetoric for the sharp increase in unaccompanied children taking custody across the United States’ border.
The Biden government continued the Trump-era policy of using public health law to quickly expel most migrant adults and families from the southern border, but protected unaccompanied children from evictions.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and a team of senior administration officials visited migrant detention facilities along the southern border last week, amid an increase in crossings for unaccompanied children. Authorities are expected to inform Biden this week.
More than 7,000 unaccompanied migrant children were transferred to US refugee agency shelters last month – a record for February, as CBS reported over the weekend. According to internal documents, the refugee office has been set up to receive 440 migrant minors in a single day this week.
United States law requires the refugee office to place unaccompanied children on evaluated sponsors while they are subjected to deportation procedures. While in the United States, children can seek asylum or other forms of humanitarian protection, such as visas for minors who have been abused, abandoned or neglected by their parents.
In a statement to CBS News, the Refugee Resettlement Office said it is working “aggressively” to release migrant children in its custody to sponsors, who are generally family members residing in the United States.
The agency also noted that it reopened Trump-era influx retention facilities in Carrizo Springs, Texas, and began reactivating beds that had been taken down during the pandemic to “alleviate the overpopulation” of unaccompanied children at border patrol posts. .
Although it has more than 13,000 beds for migrant children, the refugee office reduced its capacity last year to about 8,000 beds to implement social distance measures.
On Friday, citing “extraordinary circumstances,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed shelters hired by the refugee agency to return to pre-pandemic levels, provided they implemented improved coronavirus mitigation measures.
DHS and White House officials did not respond to requests for comment on documents obtained by CBS News.