Migrant kids may go to S.A. sites
Feds talk with county to use coliseum, seek Pentagon OK for Lackland dorm
The government is including San Antonio in its scramble to shelter thousands of migrant children arriving at the southern border, negotiating with Bexar County to use the Freeman Coliseum and asking the Pentagon to loan a vacant dormitory at Joint Base San Antonio-lackland.
The Pentagon is awaiting approval from Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks but is ready to accede to a Department of Health and Human Services request for the Lackland dorm and some land to set up temporary structures at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, officials said.
It was unclear how many children would be housed on the military installations or at the coliseum, or when they would arrive. County Judge Nelson Wolff said there would be no more than 2,100 children at the coliseum at any one time, but added, “We don’t have a deal yet. We’re working on it.”
The idea drew a warning from Sheriff Javier Salazar, who told Wolff and county commissioners in an email Tuesday that he couldn’t spare deputies to staff such a shelter, and wouldn’t want them to become “the front facing uniforms of this volatile issue,” given the optics at other facilities in recent days.
Meanwhile, the nonprofit division of Endeavors, a decades-old faith-based organization in San Antonio, obtained a federal contract to provide temporary shelter and processing services for detained families facing removal from the United States.
The Biden administration is struggling to care for thousands of unaccompanied teenagers and children, most from Central America, arriving at the border in record numbers, more than 500 a day. It won’t deport children without an adult guardian and their numbers have overwhelmed facilities set up for them.
Freeman, a county-owned arena east of
downtown, could house migrant children for at least two months, Wolff said. Details are still being hammered out regarding how the facility would be secured and who would provide services and food.
In his email, Salazar said Health and Human Services has a long history of lack of transparency regarding its housing conditions for migrants, and “from what I have seen, the children are not being kept in the best conditions.”
“While I certainly sympathize with these children and hope that the federal government can find a long term solution, I just don’t see that exposing ourselves or our first responders to any number of pitfalls surrounding this crisis is the answer,” Salazar said.
In an interview, Salazar pointed to photos released by U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar’s office of a crowded overflow facility near Mcallen, showing teenagers and children lying on pads and covered with foil blankets.
“If it’s just going to put them in a miserable situation, I don’t want any part of it and I’m certainly not going to force my deputies to be a part of it,” Salazar said.
As of Wednesday afternoon, he hadn’t been consulted on Freeman’s security needs, he said.
Wolff said it’s possible deputies wouldn’t be needed at Freeman and said he wasn’t worried about potential mistreatment of minors there because any contract would require standards for their care and supervision.
“Look, we’re dealing with children,” Wolff said at Tuesday evening’s coronavirus briefing. “Everybody can have their own opinions about what they think about immigration and who should be allowed in the country, who should not be. But we’re dealing with young children.”
Immigrant children with parents seeking asylum are either allowed to stay with a U.S. sponsor, often a relative, or are sent to Mexico to await processing of their claims.
Endeavors, the San Antonio nonprofit, will provide 1,289 beds and comprehensive health assessments for these families before they are removed from the country, including COVID-19 testing, under an $86.9 million contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the agency’s acting director, Tae D. Johnson.
In an email, Endeavors CEO Jon Allman said the contract “is a continuation of services we have delivered to the migrant population since 2012,” but referred questions to ICE.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday that he “would expect decisions out of the department in days, not weeks” on whether Lackland or other installations will house migrant children.
The temporary structures at Fort Bliss “would be, of course, funded by HHS, not the Pentagon, although it’s possible that we would help provide some contracting support so it can be done in an expeditious manner,” Kirby said.
If the request is approved, that agency “would maintain its responsibility for the well-being and support for these children,” he said in a prepared statement a day earlier.
“If provided, this support would be on a fully-reimbursable basis, and DOD would only provide this kind of support where (it) will not negatively affect military training, operations, readiness, or other military requirements, including National Guard and Reserve readiness.”
It would not be the first time Washington eyed major military installations in Texas for such a mission. In 2018, amid a government crackdown on both illegal border crossers and those seeking asylum, the Pentagon considered housing immigrant children at Fort Bliss and at Goodfellow AFB at San Angelo.
Instead, the government created several tent encampments to house immigrant detainees, including children, at federal facilities, including a U.S. port of entry at Tornillo, near El Paso.
In the summer of 2014, three temporary shelters were opened at Lackland, Fort Sill, Okla., and a naval base in California to handle almost 8,000 unaccompanied migrant children fleeing poverty and violence in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
Lackland, home of Air Force basic training, also took in migrant children in 2012. Health and Human Services had received 7,000 to 8,000 children who illegally entered the U.S. annually over the previous three years but saw a sharp increase that year, mostly boys from Central America older than 14.
The current influx dwarfs those numbers, with some estimating 17,000 unaccompanied minors will arrive in the United States this month alone.
“What’s happening on the border, as we’ve seen before, is an incredible human tragedy,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said during Tuesday’s briefing. “So my hope is that what happens going forward is treated with utmost compassion and care.”