Despite criticism of the reopening of a Trump-era child migrant facility, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was a “difficult choice” to reopen the facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, but the best option available.
The government opened a facility to house up to 700 immigrant teenagers after crossing the US-Mexico border unaccompanied by a parent. The first teens arrived in Carrizo Springs on Monday, which was converted two years ago into a holding facility under former President Donald Trump, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The facility has been closed since July 2019.
“Are they children in containers instead of children in cages?” Fox News Peter Doocy asked Psaki.
“We have a number of unaccompanied minors entering the country without their families,” Psaki said. “What we’re not doing is what the last government did, which was to divorce those kids, tear them out of their parents’ arms at the border.”
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Psaki said there were limited options for dealing with children who arrived at the border alone: to send them back home on a ‘dangerous journey’, to quickly place them with families and sponsors who have not been vetted or to reopen detention centers. .
A growing number of children have been detained along the southern border in recent days, straining the government’s ability to accommodate them.
Psaki added that the new facilities for migrant children had been opened to make room for social detachment. She stressed that the detention centers were operated by HHS and had been “revamped” and equipped with teachers and a medical team.
Doocy also asked Psaki about reports that hundreds of children were being held by customs and border security in a temporary facility for more than 72 hours, the legal limit before being transferred to an HHS facility. Psaki said there were delays due to weather and a lack of capacity to take care of the influx of children. “Some unfortunately stayed for four days, five days or more, but the goal is to move them to an HHS-sponsored facility as soon as possible.”
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Progressive people tore into the new migrant facility. “This is not okay, has never been okay, never will be okay – regardless of administration or party,” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, DN.Y., Tuesday on Twitter.
She added, “It’s only been 2 months in this administration and our fraught, unjust immigration system is not going to change in that time. That’s why bold reimagination is so pervasive. DHS shouldn’t exist, agencies should be reorganized, ICE should go,” ban on profit detention, create climate refugee status and more. “
Biden has said his immigration agenda will “take time” to implement to avoid a wave at the border. Weeks into his tenure, he signed executive orders to create a task force to reunite families who had been separated and to begin a review of the Trump-era program that required migrants to remain in Mexico on the southern border while their asylum applications were processed.
The Trump administration imposed a “zero tolerance policy” that led to family divorce, meaning that anyone caught crossing the border illegally would face criminal charges, even if they had few or no previous convictions. The policy led to thousands of family divorce and reports that some families still haven’t found each other.
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Under that policy, adults were taken to court for criminal proceedings, while their children were separated from them. If the charges took longer than 72 hours, children would be sent from the care of customs and border protection to the Department of Health and Human Services.
However, Trump signed an injunction to end family separation in 2018.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman contributed to this report.