More than 3,200 unaccompanied migrant children were in Customs and Border Protection custody, according to the documents dated Monday. Of those, around 2,600 were awaiting placement in shelters suitable for minors, but there were just over 500 beds available to accommodate them.
The latest data comes on the heels of a trip to the US-Mexico border by senior administration officials to assess the situation on the ground amid an increasing number of arrests and indicates a rapidly increasing trend of unaccompanied children coming into the US. Less than a week ago, there were around 1,700 children in Border Patrol custody.
As of Monday afternoon, President Joe Biden had not yet been briefed by his top aides on the weekend trip, which included a visit to a facility for unaccompanied migrant children in Carrizo Springs, Texas — the first facility for migrant children to open since Biden took office.
Among those who went was Susan Rice, former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser who now heads Biden’s Domestic Policy Council. A source familiar with the visit told CNN Rice was engaged during the visit and, at times, pressed Department of Health and Human Services officials, who run the shelters for unaccompanied migrants, on how they were preparing to respond to the surge and process migrant children more efficiently.
The growing number of unaccompanied children has raised alarm bells among officials scrambling to find shelter space to care for kids amid an ongoing pandemic that resulted in some locations keeping some beds unoccupied to comply with health guidelines.
Monday’s data reveals the continued bottleneck in the system, with more children coming into custody than the US government is prepared to care for. It also emphasizes the hurdles facing the Biden administration as it tries to strike a more humanitarian approach on immigration while juggling the realities on the border.
The numbers are overwhelming. To compare, at the peak of the 2019 border crisis — when there were overcrowded facilities and children sleeping on the ground — there were around 2,600 unaccompanied children in Border Patrol custody, a former CBP official told CNN.
Chief of staff to the first lady Julissa Reynoso briefly discussed her trip to the US-Mexico border as part of a delegation of the senior administration officials that also included Rice and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“We did speak to many of the folks involved, including children. We’re trying to manage this in an orderly fashion but very mindful of the human cost here, and in light of the fact that we are talking about kids. So that is something that we are managing,” Reynoso told reporters Monday.
Once in care, case managers will work to place children with a sponsor, like a parent or relative, in the US, but as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and precautions to avoid spread of Covid-19, the department has only been able to use a little more than half of the beds it has for children.
That trend appears to be continuing. More than 1,300 children were in Border Patrol custody for more than 72 hours, according to documents. The majority of children are 13 years old and up.
Source : CNN
