The recent surge in children crossing the Rio Grande Texas border into the United States illegally has put stress on the border town as well as Arizona, where hundreds are being held in a Border Patrol facility. This stress has already begun to fall on Miami shelters as well.

Since October 2013, 47,000 children have been caught trying to cross the U.S. southwest border. It is expected that 60,000 minors, mostly from Central America, will be caught at the border this year, 10 times more than in 2011, according to government estimates. Currently, hundreds of these children are being sent to a shelters in Texas and Arizona, but EFE reported that Miami has been chosen to receive some of these minors as well.

Cheryl Little, co-founder and executive director of nonprofit law and advocacy firm Americans for Immigrant Justice (previously known as Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center), told El Nuevo Herald newspaper that the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement already started to add beds to Miami shelters three months ago.

"Within the last month, we learned that 98 more children's beds were being added in Miami and were asked whether we could handle the added work," Little said via the AI Justice media page. "We're committed to helping these children even if it means putting in long hours."

According Little, the city's shelters were already overwhelmed by unaccompanied migrant children last year. Michelle Abarca, AI Justice's directing attorney for the group's Children's Legal Project, said the nonprofit group helped about 1,600 children in the area last year, and 2014 is expected to surpass this number soon.

The group is holding the children in three different Miami shelters and works to provide the children with legal assistance as well.

"Our job is to provide these children with advice about their basic legal rights and then to interview each child to determine whether or not they have a legitimate claim for relief [to remain in the United States]," Little said. "Representing children is particularly challenging because they've been abused for years, as many of our clients have, and they may not understand that it's important to tell us about the abuse because it's normal to them."
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Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

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