By Curtis Brodner
The Biden administration boasted an 88% drop in unaccompanied children detained by Customs and Border Protection last week, but reporting from the Associated Press revealed that tens of thousands of children seeking asylum are now detained in hundreds of mass detention centers with similar problems.
The number of migrant children in government custody more than doubled over the past two months and, as of Tuesday, the U.S. government was detaining 21,000 minors.
Quality of life at these facilities varies. Some provide adequate care for the asylum-seeking children detained there, whereas others are endangering the health and safety of the imprisoned minors, according to advocates and experts.
“Here we are back to a point almost where we started, where the government is using taxpayer money to build large holding facilities ... for children instead of using that money to find ways to more quickly reunite children with their sponsors,” Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Luz Lopez told the Associated Press.
President Joe Biden is continuing some of the policies he criticized Trump for implementing. He is not fully vetting staff at the facilities, for example.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is working to settle lawsuits that accuse child detention center staff of abusing the minors in their custody.
The administration has already dismissed staffers working at emergency sites due to reports of abuse, an anonymous official told the Associated Press.
Included in the network of over 200 mass detention centers are unlicensed emergency facilities that circumvent state regulations and have little oversight.
One subgrouping of detention centers labeled Emergency Intake Sites don’t guarantee access to education, recreational opportunities or legal counsel.
The Department of Human Health Services, the agency that runs the detention centers, won’t grant access to journalists and declined to specify if there are any legally enforceable living standards at the facilities.
“HHS has worked as swiftly as possible to increase bed capacity and to ensure potential sponsors can provide a safe home while the child goes through their immigration proceedings,” an HHS spokesperson told the Associated Press in a statement. “As soon as wrap around services — on-site primary care, including childhood immunizations and physicals, case management, phone calls to family members, education, recreation etc — become available as a result of additional infrastructure and staff, they are provided as part of the operation.”