PENTAGON: 20,000 minors could be placed in tent cities on bases in Texas, Arkansas
The Pentagon said Thursday that federal authorities could place up to 20,000 children in tent cities on three military installations in Texas and one in Arkansas.
The Department of Health and Human Services has not settled on where to temporarily place the children, unaccompanied minors who have arrived at the Texas-Mexico border on their own, said Army Lt. Col. Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.
The government is considering sending them to Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo and Fort Bliss in El Paso. Another Air Force base in Little Rock, Ark., also is under consideration.
Just when a decision would be made wasn't clear, Davis said, adding, “This is all very fluid.”
Facing a firestorm of criticism over his administration’s policy of removing children, some of them infants, from undocumented parents crossing the border, President Donald Trump on Wednesday declared families would be kept together in detention and ordered Defense Secretary James Mattis to support federal agencies as they grapple with how to house their growing numbers.
Several facilities already are operating across the Lone Star State, one a new tent city in Tornillo, near El Paso, for teenage boys, and another in Houston.
Davis described the Pentagon as playing a supporting role.
“It’s being worked out as to what that support is going to look like,” he said.
Trump, in an executive order ending the family separation policy, said Mattis will “provide to the (Homeland Security) secretary, upon request, any existing facilities available for the housing and care of alien families, and shall construct such facilities if necessary and consistent with law. The secretary, to the extent permitted by law, shall be responsible for reimbursement for the use of these facilities.”
Officials with the Army and Air Force said they didn’t know what federal authorities planned to do at their installations.
A post with more than 1 million acres in Texas and New Mexico, Fort Bliss hosts the 1st Armored Division and the 32nd Army Air and Missile Defense Command. It’s known for operating the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, dubbed THAAD, as well as the Patriot missile.
Goodfellow AFB is home to the 17th Training Wing, which produces intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance specialists as well as firefighters for the services. The 7th Bomb Wing flies the B-1B Lancer, a supersonic conventional bomber, out of Dyess, while Little Rock Air Force Base is a training hub for the C-130 Hercules, a troop and cargo plane.
In a development stemming from Trump’s executive order, defense officials ordered 21 military lawyers to the border to prosecute immigration cases. Geoffrey Corn, a retired military attorney and professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston, said the action wasn’t unprecedented. He noted that military lawyers have been detailed to U.S. attorney’s offices before, to help with drug prosecutions.
The decision, however, was blasted by U.S. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, Joni Ernst, R-Iowa and Patrick Leahy, D-New York, who urged Mattis to reverse course. In a letter to the defense secretary, they complained the action would “leave activeduty posts empty and would involve calling up reservists for this mission despite the DoD’s own recent admission that JAG Corps caseloads are full.”
It was not clear if Mattis responded.
If the Pentagon’s role in helping settle migrant children isn’t clear, there is precedent for such circumstances.
In 2012, the Defense Department used installations to house children — one of them Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, where all Air Force enlistees undergo basic training.
That year, 100 unaccompanied children were housed at Lackland following a surge of young people trying to cross the border. The Department of Health and Human Services' division of Unaccompanied Children's Services, charged with caring for kids caught crossing the border, brought the first minors to the base on April 16, 2012.
They were housed in an unused 1,000-student dormitory with showers and a dining hall.