Customs and Border Protection is looking at opening more temporary outdoor facilities on the southern border as the Biden administration struggles with an increase in arrivals of migrant families and children, the Washington Examiner has learned.
“CBP is exploring overflow facilities at various locations along the southwest border in order to house them because [other agencies] cannot take them,” a Department of Homeland Security official told the Washington Examiner Thursday.
CBP’s Border Patrol office is responsible for arresting and detaining any person who enters the United States between land border crossings. To accommodate the large number of people being apprehended, it has already stood up one “soft-sided” tent-like facility in South Texas because a building that was built during the Obama administration for that purpose is under renovation. The Obama-era building could hold more than 1,000 people, but it was criticized by progressives as inhumane because of the chain-link fencing that is used to divide cells, dubbed as “cages.”
Before the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic a year ago, any person encountered illegally crossing from Mexico into the U.S. would have been apprehended by Border Patrol agents then taken into custody. Last March, the Trump administration allowed agents to return all adults, families, and unaccompanied children immediately to Mexico.
BIDEN’S HANDS TIED ON BORDER CRISIS BY 1997 COURT DECISION
But now, in a development that particularly affects South Texas, historically the busiest region for illegal migration on the 2,000-mile border, a change in Mexican law has prevented the Border Patrol from returning families and solo children, forcing the Border Patrol to hold people in its custody. Detaining migrants in enclosed areas poses a risk to them and to employees because of the pandemic.
Border Patrol is supposed to turn over unaccompanied minors, or children who show up on the border without a parent or guardian, to the Department of Health and Human Services, whose Office of Refugee Resettlement operates childcare facilities specifically for children and teenagers. Families are transferred to DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
But Border Patrol is getting backed up and unable to transfer children to HHS due to a lack of available space, which is leading the Biden administration to consider increasing the Border Patrol’s capacity to hold children until HHS can take them. Border Patrol is not supposed to hold people in its custody more than three days.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Meanwhile, court orders and capacity limitations prevent ICE from holding the normal number of families. The Flores settlement agreement also maintains that families or unaccompanied children must not be held once in ICE or HHS custody for more than 20 days, putting the Border Patrol in a bind on how to hold thousands of people. As of late last week, CBP had 750 children in its custody waiting to be transferred to HHS, according to CBS News.
