As of Sunday morning, US Border Patrol detained more than 4,200 unaccompanied migrant children short-term holding facilitiesincluding prison-like stations unsuitable for housing minors, according to government documents reviewed by CBS News.
Nearly 3,000 of the unaccompanied children under customs and border control (CBP) were detained for more than 72 hours. The Dutch DPA is required by law to hand over most unaccompanied minors to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the agency that oversees shelters licensed to house children, within three days of their arrest.
The number of unaccompanied children in CBP custody on Sundays represents a 31% increase from early last week, when the agency detained more than 3,200 minors. The number of children detained for more than three days has more than doubled.
According to government reports reviewed by CBS News, an average of 565 unaccompanied minors have been detained by the CBP every day for the past week.
The data shows that unaccompanied minors spend an average of 117 hours in a border security facility, which, according to Homeland Security Minister Alejandro Mayorkas, “is not a place for a child”.
US Customs and Border Security
Collectively, the statistics point to the humanitarian crisis unfolding at the US-Mexico border due to a sustained increase in the number of unaccompanied children in detention and a lack of adequate shelter space to house them.
In February, nearly 9,500 unaccompanied children arrived in US border custody, of which more than 7,000 were transferred to ORR, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The arrivals of Central American teens and children only increased in March.
With thousands of children held in short-term border security facilities, most of which are built to hold migrant men, detention conditions have become overcrowded, according to lawyers who interviewed minors in US custody.
Children interviewed Thursday by attorneys supervising as part of a federal lawsuit reported sleeping on the floor; being hungry; shower only once in no less than seven days; and not being able to call family members.
“One of them said he could only see the sun when he showered because you can see the sun through the window,” Neha Desai, a lawyer with the National Center for Youth Law, told CBS News, citing interviews with nearly a dozen children, including an unaccompanied 8-year-old girl.
According to government data, CBP sectors in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso, Texas – as well as Yuma and Tucson, Arizona – are all overcapacity when it comes to their space to accommodate unaccompanied children. With more than 2,500 unaccompanied minors in custody, the Rio Grande Valley sector currently has a capacity of 363%.
US Customs and Border Security
Representatives from the CBP and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to requests for comment.
DHS has admitted several times that it struggles to process the large numbers of migrant families and children who come into the ward’s custody.
“We are partnering with HHS to meet the needs of unaccompanied children, which is only made more difficult given the protocols and restrictions needed to protect the public health and health of the children themselves,” Mayorkas said Saturday. a statement outlining the commitment of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials to assist in the processing of underage migrants
With approximately 9,000 children in custody and the number of beds reduced by social distance measures, the refugee agency has done its best to find space for unaccompanied migrant children. The agency is considering housing children at a military installation in Virginia, as well as a federal airport in California under NASA supervision.
On Sunday, HHS opened a new emergency facility in West Texas to house unaccompanied children, the department confirmed to CBS News. HHS called the facility in Midland, a former oil workers’ camp, a “temporary measure” and said its goal is to get unaccompanied minors out of border patrol custody.
BuzzFeed News first reported on the opening of the facility, which will be staffed by American Red Cross workers, contractors and HHS officials.
The refugee agency releases hundreds of migrant children to family members and other sponsors every week, but the dismissal rate is overshadowed by the number of minors entering U.S. border detention.
Since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) allowed the refugee agency to ease social distance policies and return to pre-pandemic beds, only 200 additional beds have been available, Biden officials said Friday.
HHS has also placed personnel at Border Patrol facilities to expedite the process of releasing minors, and has rescinded a Trump-era agreement with DHS that allowed certain information about children’s sponsors to be sent to the immigration services – an action that was intended to encourage undocumented families to sponsor children. .