The Biden administration is opening another overflow facility to house migrants near the U.S.-Mexico border, where thousands of children are coming across the international boundary without parents every week.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced in a press release Saturday evening that it will soon open the Target Lodge Pecos North facility in Pecos, Texas. The new facility will become the fourth processing center that HHS’s Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Refugee Resettlement has opened since President Biden took office in late January and record-high numbers of single children, known as unaccompanied minors, began increasingly arriving at the southern border.
Pecos is located 100 miles east of El Paso, Texas, and 50 miles west of Midland, Texas, where another temporary influx center was set up. The forthcoming facilities will initially hold 500 children with the ability to take up to 2,000 children. HHS did not reveal when it will open in Pecos but said that it “will be used when the site is ready to safely receive children.”
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Border officials anticipate that 117,000 children will arrive without parents or guardians in 2021. The number is higher than the 68,000 taken into custody during the 2014 surge of unaccompanied children and the 80,000 who arrived during the humanitarian crisis at the border in 2019. As of Thursday, HHS had 9,562 children in its care and another 4,500 in U.S. Border Patrol custody waiting to be transferred to HHS.
When children cross the border between land ports of entry intended for use by vehicles and pedestrians, they are taken by Border Patrol agents to regional stations for processing. The stations were built to hold adults for no more than three days before they are transferred to other agencies or returned south of the border. Children are to be turned over to HHS quickly, which oversees shelters where children will be held an average of one month while the government looks for adults based in the United States who can claim custody of the children. All children will go through immigration proceedings in court, but the process can take years due to a significant backlog.
The new Pecos facility will serve as an intermediate stop between Border Patrol and HHS shelters. HHS is making 13,500 beds available for children nationwide, and the shelters provide educational, medical, mental health, and recreational services for children, as well as meals and beds.
The last major surge of single children occurred in 2018 and into 2019. At the highest point, HHS had 14,226 children in its care in December 2018, according to federal data. The Border Patrol has not historically published data on children in custody.
HHS has opened several overflow facilities in Texas, with locations opening Carrizo Springs, Midland, and Dallas. The Carrizo Springs location is no longer receiving children from the Border Patrol after its coronavirus positivity rate spiked past 10%.
The uptick of children follows the Biden administration’s decision in January to stop returning the minors to Mexico, as was the policy in the final 10 months of the Trump administration. Children were sent back to their home countries to avoid filling government immigration facilities with people during the pandemic.
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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. Legally, the U.S. government has the ability to expel anyone it encounters illegally entering the country during the pandemic, which it has continued to do with some families and all adults.
