Thread by @AG_Conservative

There seems to be a lot of confusion about the issues on the border and the actual process. I'm going to try to lay out some of the facts in one thread to make it easy for future reference.

The process is much more complicated for children so that's what I will focus on.

After someone is caught near the border having crossed illegally, they are taken to a CBP facility for processing.

These facilities have recently been holding between 14,000-18,000 people on any given day.

Out of that number, around 2K are unaccompanied alien children.

These are either children that came alone or were separated (as required by law) from other adults (not parents) that brought them across.

The law typically requires that those children only be held in these facilities for 72 hours before they are handed over to HHS to be placed with relatives or other suitable arrangements. But it allows for exceptions in some circumstances.

These are the very facilities you have seen reports on in the news as having subpar conditions. They have never been set up for long-term stays.

The problem has been that HHS hasn't had the ability to meet that 72 hour window because of the huge influx of people at the border.

HHS has also had trouble placing kids once they do have them. As a result, kids have been staying at these inadequate CBP facilities for days or weeks longer than they are supposed to. The facilities are way over capacity.

The point being is that the system as it is set up is meant to protect kids from spending too much time at such facilities or even in custody, but a combination of lack of resources and bureaucracy have strained it to the point where those guidelines aren't being followed.

The Senate and House are both considering aid bills to help. The House bill focuses aid on HHS so they can speed up placing kids and picking them up from CBP custody. Senate bill gives more to improve actual CBP facilities.

Also worth noting that HHS is tasked with not just handing these kids over to anywhere they can place them, but also vetting who they place them with. That takes time and resources they currently lack.

AOC and her allies in Congress oppose the aid mentioned above. Their only proposed solution at this point is to get rid of the facilities completely. It is not clear what they want done with the 2K kids/day who currently are in CBP custody. I guess just release them anywhere?

I should mention specifically that Flores has a bunch of rules as to how children need to be treated in custody (safe and sanitary, adequate food etc.) and how long they can be in custody (20 days).

Those standards are not being met, similar to what we saw during 2014 crisis.