Processing hubs for migrants in works

Releasing arrivals into U.S. within 72 hours said to be goal of administration

The Biden administration is preparing to convert its migrant family detention centers in South Texas into Ellis Island-style rapid-processing hubs that will screen migrant parents and children with a goal of releasing them into the United States within 72 hours, according to Department of Homeland Security draft plans obtained by The Washington Post.

The plans show the Biden administration is racing to absorb a growing number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border amid shortages of bed space and personnel. Republicans and some Democrats fear that relaxing detention policies will exacerbate a surge that is already straining the administration.

On Wednesday, senior ICE official Russell Hott notified staff of the rapid-processing plan in an email that said arrivals by unaccompanied minors and families this year “are expected to be the highest numbers observed in over 20 years.”

If U.S. border officials continue to take in more than 500 family members per day, the change in use to the family detention centers “may not be sufficient to keep pace with apprehensions,” Hott warned.

Individuals who cannot be housed in one of the rapid-processing centers may need to be placed in hotels, Hott wrote. An ICE contractor will help transport the families to hotels if there is no longer capacity at the centers, he said.

Transforming family detention presents a significantly different vision of how to handle the fast-changing character of mass migration at the southern border.

For decades, single adults — particularly men — dominated the flows northward, but the number of families and minors traveling without their parents has increased substantially in recent years. Before the coronavirus pandemic, migrant families and unaccompanied minors were a majority of those taken into custody at the southwest border, a trend that more closely resembles refugee streams worldwide.

During the Obama and Trump administrations, most families were quickly released or deported. But some were held in dormitory-style facilities for weeks or months for immigration proceedings. Advocates for these families have long said they shouldn’t be detained at all — a sentiment that President Joe Biden echoed on the campaign trail last year.

“Children should be released from ICE detention with their parents immediately,” Biden wrote on Twitter in June. “This is pretty simple, and I can’t believe I have to say it: Families belong together.”

Six weeks into his presidency, advocates are frustrated that his administration has continued to detain families and expel them from the border under a public-health order, baffling child-welfare advocates who hoped the detention centers would finally close.

The Biden administration has said it is reviewing the way it uses family detention facilities, but told a federal judge last week in a lawsuit over the detentions that the policies had not changed.

But Department of Homeland Security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the transition to rapid-release centers is already underway.

FEMA ASSISTANCE

The Biden administration also wants to use the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help cope with the growing number of migrant adults and children crossing from Mexico, according to two people familiar with the proposal.

Department of Homeland Security officials sent a request to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, this week and are awaiting the state’s consent to proceed with FEMA assistance, the costs of which would be covered by the federal government, according to these people, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Abbott’s office would not say Thursday what it plans to do.

The FEMA plan is an indication that the Biden administration views the influx as a significant emergency. Mayorkas told reporters Monday that the situation did not amount to a crisis but rather a “stressful challenge” that he blamed on Trump administration policies.

FEMA support in Texas would be aimed primarily at testing and potentially quarantining family groups and adults before their release from Customs and Border Protection.

Families that are not returned to Mexico are typically issued a notice to appear in court and released to nonprofit groups that help them reach their destinations in the U.S.

Customs and Border Protection does not screen migrants for coronavirus infection unless they demonstrate signs of illness.