Total of migrant kids at largest shelter plummets
SAN DIEGO – The number of migrant children housed at the Biden administration’s largest emergency shelter for those who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone has dropped by more than 40% since mid-June, a top U.S. official said Monday, touting progress at the facility that has been criticized by child welfare advocates.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said 790 boys are now housed at Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas, and the last girl left Monday. He did not say if all the girls were reunited with relatives in the U.S., were sent to licensed facilities or if some were transferred to another unlicensed, emergency shelter that the government has opened as record numbers of unaccompanied children cross the border.
In mid-June, the administration reported about 2,000 boys and girls were at the Fort Bliss facility amid child welfare advocates’ concerns about inadequate conditions.
Becerra said his agency, which is responsible for caring for migrant children, is evaluating if some of the emergency shelters can be closed. But he declined to say if Fort Bliss will be among them.
He made his second visit to Fort Bliss since it opened in March and said more services and staffing have been added, including case managers who have helped get children released to relatives in the U.S. or placed in licensed facilities more quickly.
In transcripts of interviews done by attorneys and filed in federal court in Los Angeles last week, migrant children described their desperation to get out of Fort Bliss and the other large shelters set up by the Biden administration.
The children were interviewed from March to June by attorneys monitoring a longstanding settlement governing custody conditions for migrant children.
Some of the children said they did not know if anyone was working to reunite them with their families, giving them anxiety. Others did not have enough access to a mental health counselor, had trouble sleeping because lights were kept on at night and were avoiding meals because the food smelled foul. Several said they spent their days sleeping and had been in the facilities for more than a month.
Vice President Kamala Harris visited El Paso on Friday, and spokeswoman Symone Sanders told reporters that President Joe Biden has instructed Becerra to “do a thorough investigation” and report back about the conditions at Fort Bliss.
Shaw Drake, staff attorney and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, applauded the reduction in the number of children housed at Fort Bliss but questioned why it has taken this long to see real progress in releasing kids from the government’s unlicensed shelters.
Drake praised the Biden administration for helping get children out of overcrowded holding facilities for adult migrants by opening more than dozen emergency shelters quickly. But he said “immediately after that, the focus should have been to reunify children with sponsors, and it seemed like that languished and left kids in places like Fort Bliss far too long.”