The Biden administration is weighing a new name for the facilities it is setting up to manage the influx of migrant children and families at the southern border, hoping to limit the criticism and emphasize that the buildings will hold people only temporarily.
Biden officials are considering naming the facilities “reception centers,” according to three people familiar with the discussions, on the logic that the name sounds less harsh.
The name would distinguish the facilities, one of which has been set up in Carrizo Springs, Texas, from existing structures maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. Images of one such Border Patrol facility led to criticism that President Donald Trump held children in “cages.” Often, other such buildings are called “detention centers” or “holding facilities.”
In particular, one official said, the new name would mark the Biden administration’s intention to use the “reception centers” not for holding people in custody, but for serving as sending-off points for releasing migrants into the United States.
“These facilities are going up, but they’re being utilized differently. The direction is very clear. Release them as fast as possible,” said the first person. “If you can’t receive [migrants] from a Border Patrol station, then release them right there, do it. If that area gets overcrowded, they’re giving instruction to ICE to then bus them further into the interior of the United States.”
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The same official said Border Patrol is looking at putting up temporary tent facilities as overflow facilities in Yuma, Arizona, and Tucson, Arizona. Planning for overflow Border Patrol facilities, where all illegal crossers are held before they are transferred to ICE, HHS, or released into the U.S., began before Biden took office as border authorities anticipated more room would be needed as the numbers have increased since last spring.
Border Patrol and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson from HHS ORR did not confirm or deny that planning for the reception centers was going forward.
“We want to emphasize – the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at HHS’ Administration for Children and Families in general operates a network of state licensed residential centers for children, NOT prisons, jails, or detention centers,” HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, which oversees ORR, said in an email. “We will notify state and local officials well in advance of opening this or any other temporary influx care facility.”
Border officials anticipate that 117,000 children will arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent or guardian in 2021, according to a White House domestic policy council document, Axios reported Tuesday. The number is higher than the 68,000 taken into custody during the 2014 surge of solo children and the 80,000 who arrived during the 2019 humanitarian crisis at the border.
Two factors have boosted the number of children and families being taken into custody. First, a new Mexican law blocked families with children who are seven and older from being returned to Mexico on the basis that shelters cannot accommodate the returns. In response, Border Patrol cannot turn away parents with young children who illegally cross the border.
Second, the Biden administration in January chose to stop returning people to Mexico immediately all Central American children who show up at the border without parents, as was the policy in the final 10 months of the Trump administration. Border officials are also anticipating that the government will be on the losing end of a forthcoming court decision on Border Patrol’s ability to send back families with older children to Mexico, which would further increase the number of people being taken into custody.
Liberal Democrats are upset that the Biden administration is choosing to open overflow facilities to house children who show up on the U.S.-Mexico border without a guardian or parent, but aside from releasing children by themselves into the U.S., there are few alternatives. Legally, the U.S. government has the ability to send all unaccompanied children from Central America, where the majority are traveling from, back to Mexico during the coronavirus pandemic, which it has continued to do with adults who arrive without children.
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However, after taking office in January, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directed Border Patrol not to send any single child south of the border, choosing instead to stick along the lines of a 2007 trafficking law that protected most single children from being deported. Mayorkas’s decision prevents children from automatically being sent back to Mexico, but it means children must be taken into custody and held by the government for a short period. Immigrant advocates are concerned about the government’s ability to care for children properly.
