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According to government data reviewed by BuzzFeed News, US border officials kept more than 5,000 unaccompanied immigrant children in their care at the end of this week, the latest sign that the number of children arriving at the border continues to rise. .
The Biden administration struggled to quickly transfer the children out of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody to shelters and centers run by the Department of Health and Human Services ( HHS).
Many children remained at CBP stations and facilities for more than 72 hours, which is the government-imposed limit for children in detention. In recent weeks, administration officials have worked to increase the capacity of shelters to reduce overcrowding on border patrols.
Earlier this week, HHS opened an emergency reception site specifically for minors at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. The new center aims to place children in a setting more suited to their needs, according to government officials. The move came just days after the agency opened a separate emergency site in Midland, Texas.
HHS officials were also opening a new site, they revealed on Saturday. The agency will open the Target Lodge Pecos North property as an “influx care facility” for children – it can accommodate around 500 children and can be expanded to accommodate 2,000 children.
On Friday, a bipartisan group of US senators visited border facilities with Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“I just met four teenagers who made the long trip to America – one from Chile; another fleeing a violent home – to seek a better life. They looked exhausted, hopeful. Remember that each “unaccompanied minor” is a human being with a story ” tweeted Democratic Senator Chris Murphy.
“I just left the border processing facility. Hundreds of children crammed into large open rooms. In a corner, I fought back my tears as a 13-year-old girl sobbed uncontrollably as she explained to a translator how terrified she was to have been separated from her grandmother and without her parents, ”he said. he later added.
U.S. officials have been unable to keep up with the rising number of unaccompanied children at the border as they tried to return them to shelters and facilities run by HHS, which are also running out of beds. The border situation has become the latest challenge to President Joe Biden’s efforts to overturn immigration policies set by his predecessor.
As the administration continues to turn back most immigrants to the southern border under Title 42, a Trump-era order that cited the threat of the spread of the coronavirus, unaccompanied children have been the exception.
“We are about to meet more people on the southwest border than we have had in the past 20 years. We are deporting most single adults and families. We are not deporting children. unaccompanied, “Internal Security Department secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. Tuesday.
He added that they met many children at the border, including “children of six and seven, for example, arriving at our border without an adult.”
Unaccompanied Central American children who are cared for by border patrol officers are typically sent to the Refugee Resettlement Office, where they are accommodated in shelters across the country as they officially begin to apply for the asylum and are waiting to be reunited with family members in the United States. .
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