As of Thursday, there were more than 18,000 children in US government custody, compared with more than 17,000 on Wednesday. The Department of Homeland Security releases data from the previous day, a practice that began this week after growing pressure for more transparency.
The data show that more children were placed in custody of Customs and Border Protection than were transferred to the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. On Thursday, 605 children were arrested and placed in the custody of CBP and only 388 were transferred.
The Biden administration has struggled to quickly transfer children from CBP facilities, which were not designed for children, to more appropriate HHS care.
On Friday morning, the average time children spend in Border Patrol custody is about 90 hours, said a senior Border Patrol officer, but there are times when it’s more than 100 hours – more than the legal limit of 72 hours.
The officer described the situation as one in which the Border Patrol was overloaded.
“We need to speed up the transfer of these children from our custody to their custody,” said the official.