Biden Opens First Detention Center For Male Children …

Biden reactivated detention center for migrant minors in a city in the state of Texas. The center is located in Carrizo Springs, about 50 km from the Rio Grande which separates the United States from Mexico. The facilities are inherited from the Trump administration’s immigration policy which kept the center open for a month in 2019.

About 700 minors aged 13 to 17 are taken to Carrizo Springs. “Dozens of migrant teenagers got into vans on Monday to take a dusty road to a former oil workers camp, the first children’s facility opened by the Biden government,” the US newspaper reported. The Washington Post.

The center housed temporary workers from Stratton Oilfield Systems from 2012 until it closed in 2016, when according to the magazine ForbesDaniel Stratton, the owner of the land suggested that it could be used as a detention center. He showed no resistance to the use of facilities at a migrant detention center, the US magazine reported.

The new Democratic administration argues that the reopening of Carrizo Springs is due to the growing number of minors arriving alone at the border (in January some 5,700 migrant children and young people were detained) and the reduction to almost half of the capacity other detention centers for the Coronavirus pandemic.

However, Democrat Biden’s move does not match his campaign promises which included the reversal of the harsher immigration policies of former Republican President Trump. The Democratic Party had even criticized the Carrizo Spring detention center for the conditions, the lack of transparency and the cost it had (around 775 for each minor admitted).

“I cried when I read that they were going to open it again”said Rosey Abuabara, an activist who was arrested in 2019 for demonstrating in front of the center of Carrizo. “I take comfort in the fact that she is considered the Cadillac of juvenile detention centers, but I have no hope that Biden can improve,” Abuabara said. He also added that despite the services offered by Carrizo Springs, the cost and scale of the operations of the Office for Refugee Resettlement indicate a government program that benefits from the detention of migrant children.

“It’s unnecessary, it’s expensive, and it goes absolutely against everything Biden has promised to do,” said Linda Brandmiller, a San Antonio border town lawyer representing unaccompanied minors. “It’s a step backwards, it is what it is. It’s a huge step backwards,” he said. The lawyer also warned that these emergency centers are usually located out of the public eye.

Biden’s progress included signing executive orders to reverse the immigration policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump. Even last week, he presented a plan for 11 million undocumented migrants from the United States to be granted citizenship in that country. It has also put a stop to family separation and the deportation of unaccompanied minors. It is on the basis of the latter that the Democrat reactivated a juvenile detention center that his party had criticized a few years ago.

Mark Weber, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency responsible for migrant children, said the Biden administration was moving away from the Trump approach which was “focused on law enforcement ”and sought to put children first. well-being. “Every child who participates in this program is a symptom of a broken immigration system”said Weber, who has been with HHS since 2012. “There are trailers for teaching classes, a barber shop, a barber shop. The center has its own ambulances and fire trucks, as well as its own water supply, ”reported The Washington Post.

For Weber, shelters like the one in Carrizo Springs prevent children from ending up in border patrol posts that put them in cells not designed for minors, which happened in 2019. Weber also adds that Carrizo Springs does is not managed by the Service. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) but by a nonprofit called BCFS Health and Human Services, hired by the Government Office for Refugee Resettlement, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Meanwhile, about 700 kilometers south of Carrizo Springs, the migrants in the Matamoros camp in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas They will be able to enter the United States to await the resolution of their asylum claim. The registration process began practically on February 19, It is expected that this week around 25 people will be transferred from Matamoros. The camp It housed around 750 people for two years. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) hopes to reach everyone in the camp.