Border crossings strain resources
HARLINGEN, TEXAS >> Elmer Maldonado spent a week in immigration custody with his 1-year-old son after crossing the Rio Grande through Texas to request asylum. One night, the Honduran father and son slept on the dirt under a bridge shivering from the cold temperatures at an intake site where large groups of migrants turn themselves in to Border Patrol officers.
His experience illustrates a cycle that is repeating itself thousands of times a week amid a dramatic rise in migrant children and families at the U.S.-Mexico border: They arrive in the middle of the night by the dozens and are kept at outdoor intake sites, then taken to overcrowded detention facilities well past the 72-hour court-imposed limit. From there, the families are either released into the U.S. or expelled to Mexico, the lucky ones dropped off at a COVID-19 testing site with documents. Children traveling without their parents go to federal shelters that are also quickly filling up.
The process is largely out of the public eye. The Associated Press has not been allowed in any of the Border Patrol facilities. Journalists are often limited by authorities even when going the banks of the Rio Grande to witness the process and talk to immigrants.
Immigration agencies restricted Associated Press journalists from getting closer to popular crossing areas, an outdoor intake site and interdictions on multiple occasions in recent days.
On a recent afternoon, Maldonado, 40, of Olancho, Honduras, lay on the bottom couch of a bunk bed in a Harlingen, Texas, shelter where migrants stay before they take buses or flights to other U.S. destinations. His son woke up crying and coughing, and he held him against his chest rocking him back to sleep.
“He caught a cold since that night we were out,” he said. “We were shivering. For a moment I thought my body was not going to heat up.”
Once released, the fatherson duo was able to take a shower and change into a new set of clothes. The shelter donated some diapers for his son. Once the boy got up, he grabbed a container with chicken nuggets that he tried and quickly tossed aside, preferring instead a small juice box.
The Biden administration says that it’s working to address the increase in migrants coming to the border. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the White House efforts at the U.S. southern border and work with Central American nations to address root causes of the migration. The government also issued a statement saying it will provide a daily tally of child migrants in custody.
The government said there were nearly 5,000 children in Border Patrol custody as of Tuesday and an additional 11,551 at shelters from the Department of Health and Human Services.