The Biden administration is reportedly opposed to reopening a scandal-ridden migrant center in Florida, which was run by a for-profit company, as unaccompanied children continue to overwhelm the border facilities.
Those in President Biden’s orbit said he directed Health and Human Services officials to look elsewhere and avoid the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, a center that both the Trump and Obama administrations used, according to Axios, which cited people familiar with the matter.
The facility, at its peak, housed roughly 8,500 solo minors but was marred by allegations of sexual abuse, human rights violations, and reports that the children were placed in close proximity to hazardous waste when it was open from 2016 to 2017 and later reopened from 2018 to 2019.
Many of the misconduct accusations preceded the Trump administration and were wielded by immigrant rights groups to speak out against Biden’s pro-migrant stance. Earlier reports suggested the president may have considered reopening the Homestead facility in mid-February.
A group of then-Democratic presidential candidates, including now-Vice President Kamala Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, visited the facility in June of 2019 and demanded its closure.
“What is being done in that building is being done in our name and with our money and it is wrong,” Buttigieg said at the time. “But if it is our tax money, our country, then it is our obligation to bring about something different, and that is what we are here to do. We will say no more to prisons for children.”
Biden’s stance on the issue follows the administration’s scramble to find additional facilities to house unaccompanied migrant children as authorities estimate an unprecedented 117,000 solo minors will make their way into the United States by the conclusion of the year. Upwards of 4,200 migrant children have found themselves in short-term holding facilities designed for adults, 3,000 of which have been held past the legal detention limit of 72 hours.
Some of the solo minors have been detained in jail-like concrete rooms without beds, dubbed “hieleras,” or iceboxes.
On Monday, an HHS memo revealed that 3,000 migrant children would be housed in a Dallas, Texas, convention center to accommodate the surge in a so-called “decompression center.” The facility, which is set to operate for 90 days, will be home to boys between the age of 15 and 17.
The move was preceded by a Saturday announcement from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the Biden administration would be enlisting the help of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to combat the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“A Border Patrol facility is no place for a child,” Mayorkas said at the time. “We are working in partnership with HHS to address the needs of unaccompanied children, which is made only more difficult given the protocols and restrictions required to protect the public health and the health of the children themselves. Our goal is to ensure that unaccompanied children are transferred to HHS as quickly as possible, consistent with legal requirements and in the best interest of the children.”
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Biden administration officials said on Friday the migrant children are under U.S. care for an average of 37 days and admitted that they are unable to keep up with the skyrocketing demand.
“We are not in a place where we’re going to be able to meet the demand that we are seeing,” a Biden administration official said. “Every day, we are bringing new beds online, but it takes a lot of time, unfortunately, in terms of our licensed care-provider network. We are aggressively adding hundreds of beds by the week to our care-provider network.”
Neither the White House nor HHS immediately responded to requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.
