Emergency sites for migrant children raising safety concerns

The U.S. government has stopped taking immigrant teenagers to a converted camp for oilfield workers in West Texas as it faces questions about the safety of emergency sites it is quickly standing up to hold children crossing the southern border.

The Associated Press has learned that the converted camp has faced multiple issues in the four days since the Biden administration opened it up amid a scramble to find space for immigrant children. More than 10 percrny of the camp’s population has tested positive for COVID-19 and at least one child had to be hospitalized.

An official working at the Midland, Texas, site said most of the Red Cross volunteers staffing the site don’t speak Spanish, even though the teenagers they care for are overwhelmingly from Central America. When the facility opened, there weren’t enough new clothes to give to teenagers who had been wearing the same shirts and pants for several days, the official said. There were also no case managers on site to begin processing the minors’ release to family members elsewhere in the U.S.

Bringing in teenagers while still setting up basic services “was kind of like building a plane as it’s taking off,” said the official, who declined to be named due to government restrictions.

U.S. Health and Human Services notified local officials in Midland late Wednesday night that it had no plans to bring more teenagers to the site, according to an email seen by The Associated Press. There were still 485 youths on site as of Wednesday, 53 of whom had tested positive for COVID-19.