A facility in Houston with girls who only crossed the border to the United States is being closed and the minors immediately removed, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reported Saturday.
As of April 1, some 450 girls have been held in an Emergency Intake Center for Unaccompanied Children (EIS) managed by the National Association of Christian Churches (NAACC), near the Bush Intercontinental Airport.
“The NACC EIS in Houston and other Emergency Intake Centers are being used as a temporary measure,” HHS said in a statement.
Representatives from FIEL, a Houston-based immigrant rights group, praised the deportation of the girls, who are between 13 and 17 years old, according to FIEL director Cesar Espinosa, although they questioned the reasons for the move.
Espinosa said an incident was registered at the center on Friday evening and a FIEL employee saw police officers and ambulances outside the site but was unable to determine what had happened.
“It seemed there was a lot of confusion about what was happening,” said Espinosa, who translated the scene description narrated in Spanish by collaborator Alain Cisneros. “The people there seemed to be in a sad position, with their heads down and they seemed to wipe away tears.”
Houston police did not immediately answer a phone call on Saturday asking for comment on the matter. And an appeal to the National Association of Christian Churches went unanswered.
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Espinosa, who had visited the center, said the girls were housed in a warehouse.
“There was really no room for social distance … They were only allowed to get up from their beds to go to the bathroom and showers,” he added.
“Everything that was brought was for temporary use. The showers were temporary, the bathrooms were temporary, so this space was not equipped to accommodate anyone, let alone girls, ”said Espinosa.
HHS indicated that about 130 of the girls have plans to be released to a sponsor, usually a parent or relative, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) will seek a sponsor for the remaining minors.
Child welfare officials in Texas recently said they had received three complaints of alleged abuse and neglect at a San Antonio facility with more than 1,600 immigrant teenagers crossing the southern border.
Last month, the US government stopped taking immigrant teenagers to a facility in Midland over questions about the safety of those emergency facilities.
HHS has hastily opened large facilities to house migrant children in the Southwest amid a marked increase in the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border. The agency’s lack of capacity during the wave of border crossings at the beginning of President Joe Biden’s administration meant that minors sometimes had to wait weeks in overcrowded and inadequate border patrol centers.