Biden Administration Receives Backlash After Reopening Migrant Facility for Children

By Mary Anne R. (staff@latinpost.com) First Posted: Feb 23, 2021 08:18 PM EST

A Salvadorian girl sits near a Biden-Harris campaign poster inside a camp for asylum seekers on February 07, 2021 in Matamoros, Mexico. Many of the some 600 people in the camp, most from Central America, have been living there for up to a year, waiting for an immigration court hearing across the bridge in Brownsville, Texas. The camp originally sprang up due to former President Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy, where asylum seekers had to wait in Mexico during the legal process. The courts were then suspended due to the pandemic. Since the inauguration of President Joe Biden, other asylum seekers have begun crossing the Rio Grande into Texas, and immigration authorities have been releasing them pending court hearings. The camp dwellers, however, say they have yet to receive such due process. (Photo : John Moore/Getty Images)

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration is facing a backlash after reports revealed that his administration opened its immigration facility for children.

Biden reopened a tent housing facility that is housing up to 700 immigrant teenagers. Lawyers and human rights activists accuse the current administration of breaking a campaign promise to establish more immigration changes, according to a One America News Network report.

Critics have also said that the reopened facility is hypocritical as Biden has yet to launch a plan for public schools in the U.S. to get back in the classroom.

White House's Defense

Press secretary Jen Psaki then defended the move on Wednesday, saying that the move was to ensure the health and safety of the children.

[The Department of Health and Human Services] took steps to open an emergency facility to add capacity where these kids can be provided the care they need before they are safely placed with families and sponsors," Psaki was quoted in The Hill report.

The White House press secretary added that it is a temporary reopening during COVID-19, noting that their intention is very much to close it, but they want to ensure that they can follow COVID-19 protocols.

Psaki said that the Biden administration does not expel unaccompanied minors who arrived at the border. She said that they are transferred to the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is an additional Texas facility needed to accommodate migrant children in accordance with social distancing guidelines during the pandemic.

HHS said that there are around 6,800 unaccompanied children in the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

"Our goal is for them to then be transferred to families or sponsors," Psaki was quoted in a report.

She added that this is their way to ensure that kids are not in close proximity and they are abiding to the health and safety protocols.

"Kids in Cages"

Meanwhile, Psaki rejected comparisons that housing kids at the 66-acre sit were similar to holding kids in cages. The press secretary said that this was never their intention of replicating the immigration policies of the previous administration.

However, she also noted that they are in a circumstance where they are not going to expel unaccompanied minors at the border as it would be inhumane.

The Trump administration was intensely scrutinized in 2018 when it imposed a "zero tolerance" policy, which caused thousands of migrant children to be separated from their parents and held in warehouse facilities.

Former President Donald Trump eventually relented on the policy after images of children behind metal fencing caused public outrage.

Biden has repeatedly criticized Trump for separating families and failing to reunite them, claiming during their presidential debate that migrant children were "ripped from their parents' arms and separated."

Immigration lawyer, Linda Brandmiller, said that the move was a huge step backwards, adding that it is unnecessary, costly, and goes against everything Biden promised he was going to do.

She added that the locations of these shelters are in the middle of nowhere and is troubling, claiming that this was deliberately done to shelve the children in places that are not only not readily accessible, but also not accessible to anyone who cares about the children's welfare, according to an Independent report.

Tags Biden administration, migrant facility, children