White House prepares more tents at border
Immigration soars in early Biden days
WASHINGTON — U.S. border officials are preparing to open another tent facility in Del Rio, Texas, to cope with soaring numbers of migrant families and children crossing into the country in recent weeks, according to two Homeland Security officials involved in the planning.
The temporary facility is expected to open in the coming weeks and will be used by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which opened a similar “soft-sided” structure in Donna, Texas, three weeks ago. That facility and other Border Patrol facilities are under increasing capacity strain from the burgeoning influx of Central American minors and family groups in U.S. custody.
Officials are also looking at thepossibility of opening additional sites in Arizona, but those plans are less advanced, according to one official.
The Del Rio tent facility is distinct from another temporary shelter the Biden administration opened this week in Carrizo Springs, Texas, where Health and Human Services is holding migrant teens who crossed the border without a parent.
President Joe Biden has used executive authority to reverse several Trump administration border policies, but he is facing a looming crisis as more and more minors and family groups enter the U.S. without authorization. The number of minors arriving without a parent has grown to more than 300 each day in recent weeks, a more than fourfold increase since last fall.
Late Thursday night, 130 adults and teens arrived in a group near Mission, Texas, according to Brian Hastings, the Border Patrol sector chief in Rio Grande Valley.
The Trump administration used a pandemic-related public health order to rapidly send border-crossers back to Mexico, but the policy was denounced by immigrant rights groups for sending vulnerable minors to dangerous border cities. Mr. Biden ordered CBP to stop “expelling” minors, but since then, the number of teens and children arriving without parents has ballooned.
U.S. law requires CBP to deliver unaccompanied minors to HHS within 72 hours, but the volume of new arrivals has led to backups, and Homeland Security officials are scrambling to find more shelter space. Pandemic distancing protocols have reduced capacity by about 40% in the HHS shelter network.
HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement oversees the shelters and works to vet sponsors who can assume custody of the minor — typically a parent or other relative already living in the U.S.
After migrant advocacy groups criticized the Biden
administration this week for opening influx facilities, HHS said it would begin paying for airfare to deliver minors to family members and sponsors who cannot afford the travel costs.
“What is happening now is there are children fleeing prosecution, fleeing threats in their own countries, traveling on their own, unaccompanied, to the border,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday. “And our focus is on approaching this from the view of humanity ... and with safety in mind.”
Family groups pose a different challenge to the administration. The Biden administration has continued to use the Trump-era pandemic order, known as Title 42, to quickly return them to Mexico. But last month, Mexican authorities stopped taking back some family groups in the Rio Grande
Valley and other sectors, citing capacity limits in its shelter system.
The Biden administration started releasing those families into the U.S. interior in late January, typically after giving them a notice to appear in court and affixing some sort of GPS monitoring device to track their whereabouts.
Democratic officials in South Texas, a region devastated by the pandemic, have urged the Biden administration to stop the releases. Earlier this month, Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano implored Mr. Biden to halt the practice in a video uploaded to YouTube.
“I am pleading and requesting with you to put a halt to any measures regarding the release of immigrants awaiting court dates into the city of Del Rio and surrounding areas,” Mr. Lozano said.
Internal communications
among DHS officials show agency leaders scrambling to avert a humanitarian crisis.
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement to help process families and transport them further north, away from the border towns and cities where local officials are upset with Mr. Biden, according to a Feb. 12 internal email obtained by The Washington Post.