Just toured the temporary shelter for unaccompanied children in Homestead, Fla. This is the second largest shelter in the country, after the one in Tornillo, Texas. No photo or video was allowed. Or interviews of kids. A few observations:
Reporters were not shown anything that resembled cages or kennels for children. "We just don't operate that way," the director said. This is a former Department of Labor Job Corps site. It has fully equipped dorm buildings.
Children are separated by age and gender, in groups of 12. They move around the large site in lines with a staff member. They wear badges that are scanned every time they go into a building. There are many more boys (792) than girls (387).
About 70 children have been separated from their parents, the director estimated. (It was 94 earlier this week, per Department of Health and Human Services.) The rest arrived to the U.S. by themselves. Only teenagers ages 13-17 are taken in at this shelter. It has room for 1,350.
The vast majority of the children are from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, the director said. Posters and instructions are written in English and Spanish. Most of the staff appeared to be bilingual.
The shelter was reopened on March 29 to cope with an influx of children arriving into the country. It had closed down last year after the number of arrivals dwindled. HHS scouted out the site in 2015 and opened the shelter in 2016.
When they arrive, children are given five days' worth of clothes and a hygiene kit, and assigned a bunk bed. The average stay is 25 days, the director said. Most children are eventually placed with a sponsor in the U.S., often a parent, relative, or family friend.
At the shelter, children follow a schedule that includes time for reading, English classes, math and other schooling, meals, sports and counseling. They get two 10-minute phone calls a week. To promote good behavior, they let children watch movies or sporting events on weekends.
The World Cup is in high demand at the shelter, the director said. A match will be shown Friday night (not live). Several classrooms they showed us had posters on the wall with students' World Cup predictions.
We saw boys playing soccer and basketball, and girls moving from classrooms to the dining hall. The director said one boy tried to escape since March. He ran around the campus before staff reached him. He was "anxious," the director said, and later calmed down.
Several of the kids said "Good morning" or "Buenos días" to the visiting reporters. Some carried workbooks. The walls are decorated with art made by the children, as well as posters about American civics. There are signs posted for how to report harassment or sexual abuse.
Florida Sen. Bill Nelson and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz were denied access to this shelter earlier this week. Nelson decried a "coverup." They will now be touring it on Saturday, along with other lawmakers. Another tour will take place today, including for Sen. Marco Rubio.
HHS said it needed time to set up tours that wouldn't interfere with shelter operations.
The director insist4ed that the shelter is "not a detention facility," but of course, children aren't free to roam or leave.
Another interesting nugget: The children are not used to air conditioning, the director said, which explains why we saw so many of them carrying sweaters.
The facility, by the way, is expecting more children to arrive in the coming days.
To tackle a few questions: The teachers at the facility are not provided by the local school district. They have been hired directly by the contractor operating the shelter. Not all of them are certified.
There are guards across the facility. They did not appear to be armed. The facility is surrounded by chain-link fence.
You can read my tweets in story form here: nytimes.com/2018/06/22/us/…
