Biden administration struggling with surge of unaccompanied minors crossing border
Washington — Biden administration officials said Friday they do not have the ability to quickly add thousands of shelter beds to care for the record numbers of migrant teens and children stuck in crowded Border Patrol stations, as the new administration struggles to care for the soaring number of families and unaccompanied minors crossing from Mexico each day.
In recent days more than 3,500 unaccompanied teens and children have been stranded in steel-and-concrete detention cells designed for adults, waiting for shelter beds to open up, the latest Department of Homeland Security figures show. The minors are spending an average of 108 hours in Border Patrol stations before transfer to shelters run by Health and Human Services, well in excess of the 72-hour limit required by law. More than 130 minors have been waiting 10 days in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Biden officials who spoke Friday to reporters on the condition that their names not be published said they are working urgently to accelerate the release of the minors to parents and other relatives living in the U.S., but this week they have increased their shelter capacity by only about 200 beds.
The refugee office of HHS, which is responsible for taking custody of the minors while eligible sponsors are identified and vetted, is receiving three times more teens and children than the number it’s releasing, internal figures show.
The backup has produced a ballooning crisis for the Biden administration as the president seeks to advance a major immigration bill that would provide a path to U.S. citizenship for millions of immigrants who lack legal status. Biden has promised to quickly rebuild the immigration system and make it more humane, and prominent Republicans have been criticizing his approach. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and a group of Republican members plan to travel Monday to South Texas to assess the crisis themselves.
Biden officials say they are working to address the root causes of irregular migration and rebuild the U.S. asylum system. But they have not proposed new enforcement measures and say they do not have an ability to rapidly expand their shelter network, as most sites require approval from state regulators.
The administration is looking at Fort Lee, a military base in Virginia, and Moffett Field, a NASA site in California, but HHS must provide Congress with 15 days’ notification before opening a new temporary facility, officials said Friday. That has not yet occurred.
“We are also required to notify Congress before we make a formal site assessment to see if a location is suitable for children,” an administration official said. “Any coming online for any facility is going to take weeks from that initial assessment.”
In a statement Friday, DHS and HHS announced a new memorandum the agencies said would promote “the safe and expeditious transfer and care” of unaccompanied children by more quickly placing them with relatives or parents already living in the United States. This replaces a previous information-sharing agreement the agencies blamed for having a chilling effect on the willingness of undocumented family members to claim unaccompanied children for fear of being deported.