The Biden administration, faced with an influx of thousands of unaccompanied minors at the US-Mexico border, on Saturday asked a federal agency to come to the aid of overwhelmed accommodation facilities.
Alejandro Mayorkas.
Getty Images via AFP
Homeland Security Minister Alejandro Mayorkas ordered the US Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to participate in a three-month initiative to provide safe temporary accommodation to children and then hand them over to people who will take care of it, usually relatives already living in the United States.
“Our goal is to ensure that unaccompanied children are transferred to the HHS as quickly as possible, in accordance with legal requirements and in their best interest,” Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
The Ministry of Health is currently caring for some 8,800 young migrants and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has taken care of hundreds, as daily arrivals continue.
Violence
In February alone, CBP intercepted 9,457 unaccompanied minors at the country’s southern border. The number of underage migrants arriving alone at the border with Mexico had fallen to a low of 741 in April 2020, and has since risen steadily to stand at 5,871 in January.
“The federal government is responding to the arrival of a record number of people, including unaccompanied children, at the southwest border,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. “Since April 2020”, their number has increased “due to violence, natural disasters, food insecurity and poverty” in Central American countries, he explains.
Like Donald Trump, the new Democratic government continues to turn back immigrants who have crossed the border illegally. But President Joe Biden has decided not to return unaccompanied minors, and they are flocking to the border as places are limited by the Covid-19 pandemic in accommodation structures. Critics of this policy emphasize in particular that children’s stays in these structures can last for months.
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