The Trump administration is moving forward on a plan to tentatively house unaccompanied minors in tent cities located on three Texas military bases due to increasing high border apprehensions and a shortage of beds for the underage immigrants, according to an administration official.
[Border apprehensions triple in April compared to a year ago]
“[Health and Human Services] is running out of space because of the implications of the zero tolerance policy, but also because we continue to see this uptick in numbers,” an official told the Washington Examiner Tuesday evening.
The official asked not to be named in order to speak freely on the topic. HHS officials also confirmed this information later Tuesday evening.
HHS officials are looking at Fort Bliss near El Paso, Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, and Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, the official confirmed.
Government officials will travel to Fort Bliss in the next few weeks to look at the property, but it’s not clear whether the tent outposts would be located indoors or outdoors.
“DoD officials will join HHS staff to tour vacant properties available for potential future use. HHS will make the determination if any of the three sites assessed are suitable and selected for unaccompanied alien children program operations. HHS will continue to keep local and congressional officials informed during this assessment and selection process,” a spokesperson for the Administration for Children and Families at HHS confirmed.
Currently, 10,000 unaccompanied minors — known as UACs — are being held in shelters overseen by HHS, and the facilities are at 95 percent capacity.
The number of UACs apprehended by border officers has doubled from 3,100 in October 2017 to 6,400 in May.
The administration official clarified these tent cities would not house family units or groups of parents or guardians who arrive at the border with children. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement handles family unit housing while HHS holds underage kids.
Minors who are separated from adults due to the zero tolerance policy announced last month will be housed by HHS. Only adults who have previous convictions or are arrested for crimes in addition to illegal entry would be separated from their children, the official added.
The Justice Department announced in April additional immigration judges were being deployed to the border to deal with rising apprehension numbers. The move was meant to tackle the 700,000-person backlog of immigration cases in addition to the current surge.
[Also read: Seattle reverses course on ‘Amazon tax’ meant to help homeless]
