File variety of migrant kids in custody after Biden cancels Trump hard-line insurance policies
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The 3,600 or so children in US Customs and Border Protection custody rose from around 800 in February
Author of the article:
Reuters
Ted Hesson and David Morgan
Release date:
March 11, 2021 • • 22 hours ago • • Read for 3 minutes • • 
20 comments 
Blanca Urrutia, a Honduran migrant seeking asylum in the United States, is pictured with her children in a migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, on February 19, 2021. Photo by REUTERS / Daniel Becerril
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WASHINGTON – More than 3,600 migrant children were detained in U.S. border facilities Thursday morning, a U.S. official told Reuters, more than four times as many as in late February, a sign of a growing humanitarian and political crisis for President Joe Biden’s new administration.
The number of mostly unaccompanied children from Central America arriving at the border between the United States and Mexico has increased rapidly in recent weeks. More and more children are stuck in border protection stations while they wait for the transfer to increasingly overcrowded federal shelters and the eventual release to parents or other godparents.
The border stations were built to house adult men for short periods of time and could pose a COVID-19 health risk to children and employees if they get overcrowded. Last week, U.S. health officials lifted coronavirus-related capacity restrictions on emergency shelters for unaccompanied minors to ease the housing crisis, but beds filled quickly.
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Biden, a Democrat who took office seven weeks ago, vowed to overturn many of the restrictive policies put in place by former Republican President Donald Trump. In February, he allowed unaccompanied minors arriving at the border to enter the country. They had previously been sent back to Mexico or quickly deported under a Trump-era order known as Title 42.
Republicans raped Biden for taking back Trump’s tough policies, saying his administration was promoting illegal immigration. At the same time, Democrats have criticized Biden for maintaining some Trump guidelines and reopening an emergency shelter in Texas that was in use under Trump.
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When Biden ended the Mexico program, many migrants remained suspended on the US border
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The Mexican camp, which symbolized the misery of migrants, is emptying under Biden
According to official sources and experts, the arrivals are similar to the previous increases in unaccompanied minors and families in 2014 and 2019. The approximately 3,600 children in US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are in custody on February 22nd of around 800.
Acting CBP commissioner Troy Miller declined to reveal custody numbers during a press conference Wednesday, as such disclosure could jeopardize law enforcement efforts.
The Biden government has been talking to Central American nations about keeping migrants at home and is trying to conduct interviews with asylum seekers in their own countries, US House Democratic spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi told reporters at the Capitol on Thursday.
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The Biden administration on Wednesday announced it would restart a Trump-ended program that would allow certain Central American children with parents legally resident in the United States to apply for refugee status from their home countries.
About a dozen Republicans, led by the House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, will travel to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas on Monday to address what they consider to be a dire crisis.
Migrants from Honduras walk along a railway line in Tenosique, Tabasco state, Mexico on Monday, March 8, 2021. Photo by Nicolo Filippo Rosso / Bloomberg
McCarthy asked to meet with Biden last week to discuss the border, but said he had not heard from the president whose policies he blames for the recent border rise.
“(Biden) didn’t even acknowledge the crisis he was creating, let alone set a time for a meeting to resolve it,” McCarthy said.
The Biden government has been reluctant to describe the situation at the border as a crisis, despite senior officials on various occasions calling it a challenge or “an annoying problem”.
The U.S. government is still deporting the majority of migrants, including families, to Mexico as part of a COVID-19 health effort called Title 42 or is swiftly deporting them to another location.
But some non-Mexican families are allowed to move to South Texas after the Mexican state of Tamaulipas stopped accepting families with young children.
Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of the Rio Grande Valley Catholic Charities, said during a virtual event Thursday that between 500 and 800 family members are being released into their network of shelters every day.
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