Arrival of migrant kids prompts resumption of policy
Thousands of unaccompanied migrant children have been making their way to the southwestern border in recent weeks, presenting a new challenge for the Biden administration as it strives to create a humanitarian approach to unauthorized immigration.
Most of the children, who are arriving from Central America by the hundreds each day, are being placed under COVID-19 quarantine for 10 days and then shuttled to shelters around the country — prompting complaints that President Joe Biden is returning to one of the most controversial practices of the Trump administration, the extended detention of migrant children.
In the last week, the Border Patrol intercepted over 2,000 young migrants traveling without adults, most in their teens but some as young as 6. There is widespread concern their numbers could break the record set in May 2019, when 11,000 underage migrants were encountered.
“We are seeing minors up and down the line. In South Texas, we are being hammered,” said one Homeland Security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to talk publicly.
The arrival of unaccompanied children in large numbers compounds a difficult situation, with migrant families and single adults arriving at the border in ever larger numbers in recent months.
Many migrants — not all — are being turned back under an emergency public health law invoked by former President Donald Trump at the onset of the pandemic. But the Biden administration has decided not to refuse entry to minors, and they are crowding border processing facilities and straining shelters.
Human rights groups have criticized the decision to hold children in detention while placing them with relatives, a policy they say harks back to the Trump administration’s construction of tent camps along the border to hold an overflow of migrant children.
Last week, the Biden administration reopened a temporary shelter in Carrizo Springs, Texas, to house up to 700 migrant teenagers. The shelter, which faced a barrage of criticism, was closed in July 2019 after the number of children arriving at the border sharply declined.
Critics of the administration’s policies say most of the children arrive with the address and phone number of a relative in the United States and should be allowed to promptly join their families. COVID-19 quarantines are not necessary for children who test negative for the virus at the border, they say.
Pressure on the border had waned after the Trump administration put into place a bevy of policies that effectively blocked migrants from entering the United States to request asylum.
Within days of taking office, Biden swiftly signed a series of executive orders to reverse several of those measures. But the pressure seems to be escalating before his administration has had time to make the preparations it says are needed to manage a substantial number of new arrivals — ramping up border facilities, adding to the staff and coordinating with Mexico. The latest arrivals are fueled in part by deteriorating conditions in Central America and perceptions by migrants that they will receive a friendlier reception from Biden.
“The reality is, we had to pull the pin out of Trump’s brutal policies, and Biden is trying to do it in a responsible, sequenced way,” said Seth Stodder, a former assistant secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration. “But some of the dynamics are not in his control.”
The pandemic has exacerbated the challenge.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for overseeing the care of migrant children who arrive alone, operates a shelter network with 13,000 beds around the country. To comply with COVID-19 protocols, the agency has reduced the facilities’ occupancy to 60%. At least one shelter operator said his network was adhering to that capacity.
Faced with a housing crunch, the agency this week opened the temporary emergency shelter at Carrizo Springs and is reportedly preparing to reopen an even larger facility, in Homestead, Florida, which inspectors previously had deemed unhealthy and unsafe for children. A search is underway across federal property for places where additional shelters can be erected.
These shelters have been criticized because they generally hold hundreds of children in soft-sided structures, such as tents, that do not have the amenities of longer-term shelters, which are licensed and inspected.
“If they haven’t done a substantial remodel, they are opening a place like Homestead that has dangerous conditions for children,” said Hope Frye, a lawyer who was a member of an inspection team that visited in 2019.
Shelter operators around the country said they have been told that the Homestead facility would be reopened, but a Health and Human Services official said the agency had not made a formal decision yet. “We are not going to take any shortcuts,” the official said. “We are not going to put kids in dangerous situations.”