Border crisis: HHS to close three interim shelters for migrant children

The US Department of Health and Human Services has secured enough alternative small shelters for migrant children to shutter three interim shelters set up on military bases.

|
US Department of Health and Human Services/Handout/Reuters
A view of the sleeping quarters at the Naval Base Ventura County Temporary Shelter in Port Hueneme, Calif., in this Department of Homeland Security handout photo released June 12. Three interim shelters that have housed thousands of children who have come unaccompanied to the United States from Central America will close within weeks, top US newspapers reported Aug. 4.

The federal government will close three interim shelters set up on US military bases to house migrant children apprehended while crossing the border, according to media reports.

Beginning this week, the US Department of Health and Human Services will shutter emergency shelters in California, Texas, and Oklahoma, The New York Times and Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

“We are able to take this step because we have proactively expanded capacity to care for children in standard shelters, which are significantly less costly facilities. At the same time, we have seen a decrease in the number of children crossing the southwest border,” HHS spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said, in a statement.

The federal government appended the shelters in May and June in response to the surge of unaccompanied children, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, flooding the US-Mexico border. In that time, the three military facilities have housed 7,700 children seeking refuge.

President Obama requested $3.7 billion in funds to house and process the waves of children, but lawmakers were unable to pass any new funding before leaving for a five-week recess at the end of last week. However, the decision to close the shelters on military bases had more to do with securing more appropriate shelters than lack of funding, Mr. Wolfe said, according to The New York Times.

The number of unaccompanied children seeking asylum has exploded in the past year; some 57,000 children have flocked to the US border from Central America since October. That stream has slowed in recent weeks, alleviating some of the pressure on the emergency shelter system – at least temporarily.

“There remains substantial uncertainty about the future flows of unaccompanied children,” Wolfe told the Los Angeles Times. “The three temporary shelters on military bases could be reopened for a limited time if the number of children increases significantly.”

Going forward, children will be placed in smaller shelters throughout the country. While some communities have balked at the idea of opening local shelters to migrant children, youth workers who have seen first hand the challenges that mass shelters pose for young children applaud the move.

“If you can get as many kids into the traditional shelters, the better," said Eric Tijerina, associate director of the immigrant children’s legal program at the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants in Arlington, Va., who worked with children at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, according to the Los Angeles Times. "It’s a much more pleasant environment for a child,” he added.

Children typically spend a month in a shelter before they are placed with sponsors, often parents or relatives already living within the US, before immigration courts can process their cases. That takes an average of 30 days, down from last month’s average of 35 days, the L.A. Times reported. It can be another year and a half before a child goes before an immigration judge, Judge Dana Leigh Marks, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, told the Monitor in a July interview.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Border crisis: HHS to close three interim shelters for migrant children
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/0805/Border-crisis-HHS-to-close-three-interim-shelters-for-migrant-children
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe