Child border crossings surging, straining US facilities
In this Sunday, March 14, 2021, file photo, migrant children and teenagers are processed after entering the site of a temporary holding facility south of Midland, Texas. [File photo: Odessa American via AP/Eli Hartman]
Migrant children and teenagers from the southern border of the United State wait to be processed after entering the site of a temporary holding facility Sunday, March 14, 2021 south of Midland, Texas. [File photo: Odessa American via AP/Eli Hartman]
In this Aug. 23, 2019 file photo, immigrants seeking asylum walk at the ICE South Texas Family Residential Center, in Dilley, Texas. [File photo: AP/Eric Gay]
A surge of migrants on the Southwest border has the Biden administration on the defensive, with the head of Homeland Security acknowledging the depth of the problem Tuesday but insisting it's under control and saying he won't revive a Trump-era practice of immediately expelling teens and children.
The number of migrants being stopped at the U.S.-Mexico border has been rising steadily since last April, and the administration is still rapidly expelling most single adults and families under a public health order issued by President Donald Trump at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it is allowing teens and children to stay, at least temporarily, and they have been coming in ever larger numbers.
More than 4,000 migrant children were being held by the Border Patrol custody as of Sunday, including at least 3,000 in custody longer than the 72-hour limit set by a court order, according to a U.S. official. The agency took in an additional 561 on Monday, twice the recent average, according to a second official. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss figures not yet publicly released.
It has put President Joe Biden in a difficult spot, blasted by Republicans for what they view as encouragement to illegal border crossers and by some Democrats over the the prolonged detention of minors. It's also a challenge to his effort to overhaul the broader Trump policies that sought to curtail both legal and illegal immigration.
"The situation at the southwest border is difficult," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas conceded Tuesday in his most extensive remarks to date on the subject. "We are working around the clock to manage it and we, will continue to do so. That is our job."
The number of migrants attempting to cross the border is at the highest level since March 2019, with Mayorkas warning that it is on pace to hit a 20-year peak for the year.
The number of children crossing by themselves, mostly from Central America, appears to be surging in particular in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. The Border Patrol took in 280 there alone on Monday.
The total of 561 unaccompanied minors from Monday offers a snapshot of how quickly conditions have changed along the border. That was up 60% from the daily average in February, one of the officials said. In May 2019, during the last surge, the one-day peak was 370 teens and children.
Children and teens crossing by themselves rose 60% from this January to more than 9,400 in February, according to the most recent statistics released publicly by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The Health and Human Services Department plans to open shelter facilities at Moffett Federal Airfield near San Francisco and in Pecos, Texas, to handle the flow. It is also looking to expand a facility in Donna, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, to hold 2,000.
Also, the Dallas Convention Center is scheduled to begin holding children as early as Wednesday with plans to accommodate up to 3,000. Another makeshift holding center in Midland, Texas, that opened last weekend for 700 children had 485 on Monday.