White House is facing new test as young migrants arrive alone
LOS ANGELES — 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 illegal 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 more than 2,000 young migrants traveling without adults, most of them in their teens but some as young as 6. There is widespread concern that their numbers in coming months could break the record set in May 2019, when 11,000 underage migrants were encountered by the Border Patrol.
“We are seeing minors up and down the line. In South Texas, we are being hammered,” said one Homeland Security Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the situation.
The arrival of unaccompanied children in large numbers compounds a difficult situation already in the making, with migrant families and single adults arriving at the border in ever larger numbers in recent months.
Many migrants are being turned back by U.S. authorities under an emergency public health law invoked by former President Donald Trump at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. But the Biden administration has decided not to refuse entry to minors, and they are now crowding border processing facilities and straining government shelters.
Human rights groups have criticized the decision to hold children in detention during the weeks or months it takes to place 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 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.
“It seems this administration can’t think their way through to a new way to handle the situation,” said Joshua Rubin, an activist with Witness at the Border, which was preparing to stage protests outside a soon-to-reopen migrant children’s center in Florida. “Spending time in these large, impersonal places traumatizes them.”
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.
Once the children are in shelters, the Office of Refugee Resettlement arranges to send them to family members, following guidelines to make sure they are not released to traffickers and will be well cared for in their new homes.
Pressure on the border had waned after the Trump administration put into place a bevy of policies that effectively blocked migrants from entering the U.S. to request asylum.
Within days of taking office, Biden 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.”