The facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, was reopened because of the surging volume of unaccompanied children trying to cross the border from Mexico into the United States, Biden explained on Friday.
U.S. Health and Human Services said Monday that the first teens arrived at Carrizo Springs, Texas, which was converted two years ago into a holding facility under former President Donald Trump. The facility has been closed since July 2019.
Two years ago, Carrizo Springs had a large tent serving as a dining hall and assembly area, with children housed in dormitories with bunk beds and tables. The facility is reopening with changes to account for the coronavirus pandemic.
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HHS operates long-term facilities for immigrant children apprehended by the Border Patrol. Its 7,100 beds are almost entirely full, leading the agency to re-open Carrizo Springs. Meanwhile, around 700 children are being held by Border Patrol, which has reopened a tent facility in South Texas and otherwise holds immigrants in stations unequipped to detain children.
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Democrats during the Trump administration sharply criticized facilities like Carrizo Springs and others at Tornillo, Texas, and Homestead, Florida, for their high cost — an estimated $775 per child per day — and the risks of detaining immigrant children at camps not subject to the same requirements as regular facilities.
HHS says opening Carrizo Springs will provide the beds necessary to transfer children out of Border Patrol stations and eventually place them with sponsors.
“Right now, there's thousands of unaccompanied children coming across the border,” the president told Univision. His administration has already been able to place “a significant number” of the children into shelters throughout the country, he added.
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“Our hope and expectation is that won’t stay open very long and we’ll be able to provide for every kid that comes across the border safely to be housed in a facility that is licensed,” Biden said of the reopened facility.
Biden stated that what his administration is trying to do is connect migrant children "with families in this country” and “get them to the families that they came to see, or they are looking for.”
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“We’ve already connected thousands of them [through] that way. So, that’s our hope, is to unite these children with families while they wait to have a hearing,” he said.
“This administration is doing it in a humane way,” first lady Jill Biden added. “And that’s really important. We want to make sure that these children are safe, that they get mental health services, they get physical health services, they get education. So, we are really concerned about these children.”
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Customs and Border Protection is reportedly expecting a peak of 13,000 unaccompanied migrant children to arrive at the border in May, a projection that surpasses the number of arrivals at any of the months of the 2019 humanitarian crisis.
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