BIG: Trump administration reverses course on controversial policies for people who want to sponsor migrant children apprehended at the border. Change could free thousands of kids, lead to closing of Tornillo tent facility. My story for @TexasMonthly. 1/ texasmonthly.com/news/trump-fin…
With today's change, let's review how we got here. Here's my @TexasMonthly story from June detailing the new fingerprint policy for sponsors, and warning of the risks of that policy. 2/ texasmonthly.com/news/agency-ov…
The Tornillo tent facility opened in June, during family separation. Here’s my first story on the facility, after @hurdonthehill toured the site. 3/ texasmonthly.com/news/inside-te…
The Tornillo facility was immediately controversial. The El Paso County sheriff refused to let his deputies moonlight there. 4/ texasmonthly.com/politics/el-pa…
The Trump administration early on wanted to massively expand Tornillo, but couldn’t find anyone to take a billion-dollar, no-bid contract to do that work. 5/ texasmonthly.com/news/texas-com…
Tornillo originally had 400 beds, but expanded to 500, then to 3,800. 6/ texasmonthly.com/news/tornillo-…
As the number of kids in government custody grew, so did the expense. In September, HHS transferred $446 million from cancer research, Head Start and other programs to cover the expense. My story for @washingtonpost w/ @goldsteinamy 7/ wapo.st/2I3i6wA?tid=ss…
The Trump administration budgeted $1.3 billion for migrant child care in FY2019, then quickly asked for another $190 million. @RosaDeLauro said “over my dead body.” 8/ texasmonthly.com/article/more-m…
The Texas nonprofit operating Tornillo, BCFS Health and Human Services of San Antonio, let it be known last month that they wanted out. 9/ texasmonthly.com/news/operators…
This weekend, the CEO of BCFS let it be known that he was trying to use a contract extension as leverage to revise the fingerprint policy that was causing thousands of kids to remain in government custody. 10/ texasmonthly.com/news/private-o…
