BREAKING — 3,200 unaccompanied migrant children were stuck in Border Patrol facilities today, with nearly 1,400 held beyond the 3-day legal limit, according to documents obtained by @CBSNews.
The documents obtained by CBS News illustrate the escalating humanitarian, logistical and political challenges President Biden is facing at the U.S.-Mexico border early on in his presidency.
More than 7,000 unaccompanied migrant children were transferred to U.S. refugee agency shelters last month — a record high for a February, as CBS News reported over the weekend: cbsnews.com/news/migrant-c…
For context, here’s our overview of the legal authorities that govern the processing of unaccompanied migrant children, as well as the facilities where these minors are housed: cbsnews.com/news/unaccompa…
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Important details that did not make it into our story:
The US refugee office is releasing hundreds of migrant children to sponsors per week and its discharge rate continues to increase — but the number of minors being taken into custody is higher, and growing exponentially. 1/
The HHS documents we obtained show the weekly average of releases of migrant children increased from 99 in early January to 149 in late February.
But during the same time period, the weekly referral average (children entering custody) increased from 66 to 337. 2/
Between Jan 28 and Feb 24, the refugee office released 3,284 children to approved sponsors (typically family members in the US).
But that did not make a dent in the in-custody population due to the record high number of children referred in February end/ cbsnews.com/news/migrant-c…
Citing a "surge in migration," DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urged department employees yesterday to volunteer for a newly activated force that will be deployed to the US-Mexico border to provide "relief" to CBP agents, according to a message obtained by @CBSNews.
"Today, I activated the Volunteer Force to support Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they face a surge in migration along the Southwest Border. You have likely seen news about the overwhelming numbers of migrants seeking access to this country along the Southwest Border."
We reported yesterday that more than 3,200 unaccompanied migrant children were stuck in Border Patrol custody and nearly 1,400 had been held beyond the 72-hour legal limit: cbsnews.com/news/migrant-c…
DHS announces it has finished processing all migrants in the Matamoros, Mexico encampment who have pending U.S. asylum court cases.
700 asylum-seekers have been processed and admitted at the Brownsville, Texas port of entry, per DHS.
“We are no longer registering people in the Matamoros camp and no one arriving in the camp will gain access to this phased program through their physical presence there.”
DHS reiterates that the “border remains closed.”
“A small number of individuals remaining in the camp have been relocated to other locations identified by our international organization partners that afford greater protection than the informal camp.”
The Office of Refugee Resettlement, the federal agency charged with housing unaccompanied minors, has been receiving an average of 337 children per day, according to figures shared with Congress.
8,000 children are currently in the refugee office's custody, per the figures.
As reported by CBS News last weekend, the refugee office has instructed its shelters to begin using beds that had been taken offline during the coronavirus pandemic to implement social distancing measures.
NEW — The Biden administration has instructed shelters to reactivate beds for unaccompanied migrant children as it scrambles to respond to a sharp increase in border crossings, per a memo obtained by @CBSNews.
About 97% of the roughly 8,000 beds the U.S. refugee office currently has available for unaccompanied migrant children are currently full, with the agency housing 7,777 minors as of Friday, an HHS official told CBS News.
U.S. officials along the southern border took roughly 2,000 unaccompanied migrant children into custody this week, according to government data reviewed by CBS News.
Nearly 400 children were taken into custody on Friday alone.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledges that the U.S. government’s capacity to house unaccompanied migrant children taken into custody at the border has been “significantly reduced”
.@edokeefe notes during the ongoing WH briefing that more migrant children are spending more time in border stations designed to hold adult men.
"We want these kids to be in facilities where they're getting access to health and medical assistance, to education," Psaki said.
Psaki said the Biden administration is working to transfer migrant children "as quickly as possible, not just to stay in HHS facilities either, to get them into families and sponsored homes."
"That is our human and moral objective from this administration."