Responding to a call by Gov. Greg Abbott for access to immigrant children to ferret out human trafficking cases, Biden administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said Thursday that federal authorities are careful not to re-traumatize the children by repeating their stories to every public official making a request.
The exchange comes as 200 immigrant teen boys arrived at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in downtown Dallas last night from Border Patrol facilities. Rising numbers of immigrant minors traveling without a parent are being detained, and that flow of children and teens may surpass the last high cycle of 2019.
“They have faced persecution,” said an administration official on a media call. “They have had to flee for their own safety. And so we are very protective ... of making sure that children are not re- traumatized by having to recount things they have faced to every public office who wishes to speak to them.”
Children and prospective caregivers are already screened as part of the vetting process, administration officials said.
About 4,500 children are now in Border Patrol custody and about 9,500 children are in the care of the Health and Human Services Department, administration officials said.
Under law, unaccompanied immigrant children are transferred to licensed shelters for care and protection until they are reunited with their families. In about 90% of the cases, the children have a family member in the U.S., officials from the Department of Health and Human Services have said.
But because of the year-long coronavirus pandemic and social-distancing protocols, bed space has been reduced. Reunions are now taking place, on average, 34 days after the child is taken into federal care, an administration official said.
In an unusual move due to the rising numbers, some reunions are now taking place directly at the border, the official said.
Earlier, HHS spokesman Mark Weber said some reunions for children held at the Dallas convention center may take place in Dallas after the required screening of parents, family members or sponsors.
Abbott, in a news conference across the street from the convention center, said Wednesday that the Biden administration had “opened the floodgates” to immigration.
About 1,000 immigration policy changes were made by the administration of former President Donald Trump, according to a recent report by Yale Law School. The Biden administration is now reversing some of them.
The White House has said it will invest $4 billion in Central American countries to rebuild those economies and reduce violence, restart a refugee program for minors from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and hire more immigration judges. There is now a backlog of 1.3 million cases in the federal immigration courts, with the highest number of pending cases in Texas, according to TRAC, a Syracuse University nonprofit.
In 2019, about 850,000 immigrants were detained by the Border Patrol at the southern border. The record year was 2000, when about 1.6 million were detained.
Alejandro Mayorkas, Homeland Security secretary, said this week that the number of people detained at the border this year could reach highs not seen in 20 years. His assessment has been echoed by others who work with migrants in southern Mexico.
The vast majority of immigrants, mostly single adults, are “expelled” quickly at the border under a pandemic-related law known as Title 42. The Trump administration activated the law as the pandemic was officially declared in March 2020. The Biden administration has kept the restrictions in place.
On Thursday, the Dallas Mavericks delivered portable basketball hoops and basketballs to the convention center for the immigrant teen boys.
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