When will the crisis at the border come to an end?
There are two questions that government officials should be forced to answer about every pending decision. One is, “At whose expense?” and the other is, “And then what?”
Those questions might look cranky and churlish when dropped into the warm soup of good intentions. Nonetheless, unintended consequences are not scared away by warm soup. They’re just waiting to plunge in with a splash, spattering the walls with everybody’s best-laid plans.
And that brings us to the crisis at the border.
In the early weeks of the Biden administration, the president signed a stack of executive orders, some of which reversed the Trump administration’s policies and agreements related to asylum seekers. Under the new policy, unaccompanied minors who entered the United States would not be turned away.
In March, U.S. border agents encountered nearly 19,000 unaccompanied minors, the largest number ever recorded in a single month. Soon there were more than 4,100 young migrants crammed into a facility in Donna, Texas, that had a capacity for only 250 under COVID-19 distancing requirements.
On March 14, Biden directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help find shelter space and to provide “food, water and basic medical care” to the thousands of minors migrating into the U.S. government’s custody.
Typically, FEMA is dispatched to assist with the aftermath of natural disasters or other unforeseen events. Emergencies, by definition, are not a permanent condition.
But the unprecedented surge of unaccompanied children at the border is not the result of a temporary situation such as a natural disaster. It’s the consequence of a policy shift in the Oval Office. Failure to plan has caused this emergency, and there’s no reason to think it’s temporary unless there’s a plan to change the policy again.
Now the Biden administration is desperately scrambling for buildings to house the underage migrants who, by law, may not be held in a Border Patrol facility for more than 72 hours, after which they must be transferred to a shelter run by the Health and Human Services Department. The government has been unable to comply with the law, and some of the kids have been in the facility in Texas for more than two weeks.
The Biden administration has also failed to plan for the staffing needs of facilities housing the surge of migrant children. This week, HHS sent an email to government employees at other agencies, including NASA and the Department of Homeland Security, pleading for volunteers to take a four-month paid leave from their jobs to help care for young migrants in government-run shelters.
The federal government is scrambling to find non-housing facilities such as convention centers to “temporarily” house the kids who have crossed the border. In Los Angeles County, the Long Beach Convention Center and the Pomona Fairplex will be turned into shelters. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said this week that 1,500 to 2,000 young people will be staying at the Fairplex, where “wrap-around services” will be provided. The Long Beach Convention Center will house up to 1,000 migrant kids.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said the Los Angeles Convention Center would not be participating because downtown Los Angeles was not “the best place” for vulnerable children. He said the L.A. Convention Center lacks “green space” and showers. One thing it doesn’t lack is bookings. Events are scheduled at the facility beginning in late June.
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said the federal government’s contract for using the Long Beach Convention Center expires on Aug. 2, after which that site will return to its intended use.
However, there are already more than 20,000 children and teenagers in the government’s custody, and The New York Times reported government projections showing that the number could grow to 35,000 by June. If the policy doesn’t change, another 35,000 could arrive by September.
And then what? Perhaps the federal government will compete with the state of California to buy or lease hotels and motels pushed out of business by “temporary” COVID-19 restrictions. Maybe “temporary” homeless housing and “temporary” migrant housing are the future of every abandoned commercial space in California.
At whose expense? When you file your federal tax return this year, you’ll probably know.