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Migrant children currently housed in a camp under the "zero tolerance" policy by the Trump administration are shown walking in single file at the facility near the Mexican border in Tornillo, Texas, on June 19th.
Mike Blake / Reuters
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Mike Blake / Reuters
Migrant children currently housed in a camp under the "zero tolerance" policy by the Trump administration are shown walking in single file at the facility near the Mexican border in Tornillo, Texas, on June 19th.
Mike Blake / Reuters
A Honduran father who crossed the border illegally with his daughter was released Monday in El Paso with an ankle monitor – the same day his daughter was 10 years old in a government-run shelter.
The father and daughter were separated during the month he was in detention for the purposes of immigration and customs law, and she was in a shelter managed by the ministry. Health and Social Services. He said that he called a 1-800 number that HHS set up to get an update on his daughter.
"It sounded and sounded unanswered," Mario said on Monday. The helpless father only asked to be identified by his first name, Mario, because he feared that expressing him would be detrimental to his asylum claim.
"I'm crushed," he continued. "I do not know anything about her, today she is 10 years old, I can not call her and tell her how much I love her."
Mario told reporters in El Paso, Texas, that he could not talk to his daughter since they were detained separately a month ago by the Immigration and Refugee Board. Customs Enforcement.
John Burnett / NPR
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John Burnett / NPR
Mario told reporters in El Paso, Texas, that he could not talk to his daughter since they were detained separately a month ago by the Immigration and Refugee Board. Customs Enforcement.
John Burnett / NPR
The Trump administration's "zero tolerance" initiative against illegal border crossings – which led to the separation of families on the border between the United States and Mexico – has effectively ended, from less for the moment. On Monday, the Customs and Border Protection Service said it would stop returning all people intercepted at the border for criminal prosecution.
"A much better system would be to keep families united in their immigration procedures," said CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan on Monday in McAllen, Texas. "That's what Obama did in 2014, and that's what the President asked Congress to help us do now."
The CBP announcement comes less than a week after President Trump signed a decree aimed at ending the controversial separation of migrant families at the border. He insisted that the administration would continue to return every person who is captured illegally for prosecution. On Monday, officials called on Congress to provide more resources to secure the border.
The reality at the border, according to a customs official and border protection, is that the agency is overwhelmed. Border patrol stations are overcrowded and children wait in cage-like detention cells while their moms and dads go to court in chains. They simply do not have the resources to impose a "zero tolerance".
Federal agents also complain that they spend more time dealing with immigrants than keeping the border.
"It's a huge operational challenge for our agents," McAleenan said.
Burdened Customs and Border Protection End "Zero Tolerance" for Migrants
Health and social services spokesman Mark Weber says the agency's main focus is family reunification, and that they know where the parents of the children are. The agency runs more than 100 shelters and is the subject of ongoing criticism from parents, lawyers and lawyers who claim that the government is not doing enough to immediately reunite the approximately 2,000 children still accommodated in their shelters.
Activists sing at an "End Family Detention" at the Tornillo entrance gate in Tornillo, Texas on Sunday.
Paul Ratje / AFP / Getty Images
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Paul Ratje / AFP / Getty Images
Activists sing at an "End Family Detention" at the Tornillo entrance gate in Tornillo, Texas on Sunday.
Paul Ratje / AFP / Getty Images
Weber says that the agency "works as fast as possible," but that the reunification process takes time because the sponsors must be checked before the children are handed over to them.
"There are a lot of safety precautions," Weber said Monday at a border crossing in Tornillo, Texas, where the agency's newest emergency shelter is located. "We do not want to release a child too early, too fast, because we have not taken care to make sure that this child will be reunited with an appropriate parent or relative that the parent has designated."
On average, children spend about two months in shelters before being released to live with a family member.
Some are at the shelter of Tornillo – a collection of about 20 sand-colored tents in the isolated windward border crossing in Tornillo, Texas, about 30 miles east of El Paso. Critics have dubbed it a "tent city". It is about 100 meters from a steel fence and Rio Grande.
The shelter has 326 migrant children aged 12 to 17, mainly teenagers from Central America. Twenty-three of them were separated from their parents when they crossed the border illegally. And under the now suspended child separation policy of the president, when it was still in force, they were sent here, and the parents are being held elsewhere waiting to see if their asylum application is accepted. Since the shelter was hastily opened 12 days ago, one official said that three of the 23 people were reunited with their parents.
Journalists who visited the camp did not have the right to speak with the children, who smiled and thumbed up when asked how they were doing.
It is completely autonomous in the Chihuahuan desert, where afternoon temperatures reach 103 degrees. They have large air conditioning units next to each large military grade tent. There is even a cooling station next to the football field, which is made of AstroTurf, where kids will pick up Gatorade and sit next to the fans. The refuge also has its own power, water and internet.
They have the same services as in other youth shelters recruited by the HHS – 24-hour mental and medical care, individual social workers, a mess with three hot meals a day.
Also at the shelter: a phone tent with nine operators. Children are supposed to call family members in the United States or abroad to tell them where they are and try to reach them.
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