Up to 13,000 unaccompanied children expected at US border in May

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Following record numbers of unaccompanied children arriving at the US border in February, Health and Human Services officials are reportedly expecting these arrival numbers to surge to as many as 13,000 in May, Fox News reports. Customs and Border Protection officers reportedly informed the Biden administration of the expected surge during a telephone meeting attended by senior officials from HHS, Homeland Security, and the State Department on Thursday.

The anticipated spike in minors arriving at the border poses a major challenge for US migrant-child shelters, which are currently operating at reduced capacity due to COVID-19 safety precautions. The country’s network of shelters will have to continue to expand: HHS is reportedly keen to prevent a situation of children being held in unfit Customs and Border Protection centers while waiting for their immigration claims to be processed, Fox News said.

However, last month HHS reopened two notoriously inadequate facilities in Texas and Florida, which Democrats had previously attacked the Trump administration for utilizing. In response to criticism from immigration advocates and others, including Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said: “Our goal is for [the children] to then be transferred to families or sponsors … this is our effort to ensure that kids are not in close proximity and that we are abiding by the health and safety standards that the government has been set out.”

In any event, HHS and the Pentagon are working on making space at military bases where, in 2014 and 2019, children for whom there was no room at shelters were accommodated in tent-like facilities, Fox News reports.

In the course of Thursday’s meeting, officials also discussed how to invest in Central American countries so as to relieve the conditions that cause migrants to try and escape to America. There was reportedly no discussion about reimplementing the Trump administration’s use of emergency health orders to deport migrant children.

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