Joe Biden orders expanded services for unaccompanied child migrants amid surge in numbers
15 March, 2021
On Saturday, the Biden administration ordered the government's disaster emergency agency to greatly help with a surge in migrant children crossing the southern border which has overwhelmed processing facilities.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called after the Federal Emergency Administration Agency (FEMA) to support an attempt to temporarily house thousands of kids who crossed the US-Mexico border alone amid criticisms that authorities were holding them for long periods in overcrowded facilities.
MEDICAL and Human Services (HHS) department is currently holding about 8,800 migrant children and the US Customs and Border Coverage has hundreds more in their charge, with an increase of arriving every day.
In February alone CBP detained 9,457 unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border.
Facilities are actually overcrowded and authorities are actually doubly challenged by limitations related to Covid-19.
The Division of Homeland Security said in a statement that FEMA will be part of a 90-day effort to guarantee the children are safely sheltered and used in people who will look after them, usually relatives already moving into the United States.
"The federal government is responding to the arrival of record amounts of individuals, including unaccompanied kids, at the southwest border," the department said.
"Since April 2020, the number of encounters at the border provides been rising because of ongoing violence, natural disasters, foodstuff insecurity, and poverty in the Northern Triangle countries of Central America."
The practically two-month-old government of President Joe Biden faces growing pressure from migrants, apparently encouraged to attempt to enter america by his rejection of previous president Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy toward undocumented immigrants.
While migrant adults and families continue to be repaid to Mexico if they are caught, unaccompanied kids are being processed and get support resettling with US relatives.
"Our goal is usually to make certain that unaccompanied children are used in HHS as quickly as possible, constant with legal requirements and on the best interest of the children," Mr Mayorkas said in a statement.
Source: www.thenationalnews.com
TAG(s):