A federal judge ruled Wednesday that Texas must remove the floating barriers that were placed in the Rio Grande along the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to deter migrants from crossing.
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Washington — The Biden administration is planning to start housing up to 800 unaccompanied migrant children processed along the southern border in a repurposed boarding school in North Carolina later this summer, a U.S. official familiar with the plan told CBS News.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency charged with caring for unaccompanied migrant minors, is eyeing to open the facility in Greensboro, North Carolina, in August, according to the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal plans.
The former home of a boarding school known as the American Hebrew Academy will house migrant boys and girls between the ages of 13 and 17 who entered U.S. border custody without their parents or legal guardians.
With 800 beds, the campus will become the government’s largest active housing facility for unaccompanied minors. It will be opened as an “influx care facility,” a term HHS uses to describe emergency housing sites it sets up during a spike in child migrant arrivals along the southern border.
Another influx care facility in Texas, a tent camp inside the sprawling Fort Bliss U.S. Army post, currently has the capacity to house up to 500 migrant children. HHS has sought to minimize its use of the Fort Bliss camp, which was dogged with reports of substandard conditions and child depression in 2021. The other influx care facility, a former work camp in Pecos, Texas, has not housed children since earlier this year.
Advocates for migrant children have long criticized the establishment and use of influx care facilities, particularly because they are not regulated by state child welfare agencies, unlike traditional HHS shelters. Over the years, facilities like the Fort Bliss camp — and a now-shuttered facility in Homestead, Florida — have gained national infamy because of reports of subpar services and distressed children.
The facility in Greensboro, however, was originally set up to house students, and includes more than two dozen buildings, sport fields and an athletic center in a green campus near a lake. The site will offer migrant children educational instruction, recreation, mental health support and medical services.
Still, Neha Desai, a lawyer at the National Center for Youth Law, one of the groups representing migrant children in a landmark court case, said the government is relying too heavily on influx care facilities. HHS should instead use shelters licensed by state child welfare authorities, she said.
“This protracted and inappropriate reliance on unlicensed facilities undermines the commitment to placement in licensed facilities and moreover, undermines the best interests of children,” Desai added.
In a photo taken on March 27, 2021 unaccompanied child migrants who arrived into the U.S. across the Rio Grande river from Mexico, stand at a makeshift processing checkpoint before being detained at a holding facility by Border Patrol agents in the border Texas city of Roma.
ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images
HHS houses unaccompanied children who lack a legal immigration status in shelters, foster homes and emergency housing facilities until they turn 18 or can be placed with a U.S.-based sponsor, who is typically a family member, such as a parent, older sibling or grandparent. Most unaccompanied children who pass through the agency’s custody are teenagers who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without authorization after fleeing poverty and violence in Central America.
U.S. law prevents border officials from rapidly deporting non-Mexican unaccompanied children, and allows them to apply for an immigration benefit, such as asylum or visas for abused, abandoned or neglected youth, to try to stay in the country legally. HHS facilities generally have more services and better conditions than the jail-like stations and tents overseen by Border Patrol, which is bound by law to transfer unaccompanied minors to HHS within 72 hours of processing them.
While influx care facilities have been opened during spikes in child migration, arrivals of unaccompanied minors along the U.S.-Mexico border have declined since setting a record high in fiscal year 2022. Border Patrol processed 9,458 unaccompanied minors in May, a 34% drop from the same month last year, according to federal statistics.
As of earlier this week, HHS was housing just over 5,800 migrant children, the lowest level during the Biden administration, and a nearly 75% drop from a peak of 22,000 minors in the spring of 2022, government records show. At that time, the Biden administration struggled to respond to a sharp increase in the number of unaccompanied children entering border custody and was forced to convert work camps, convention centers and military bases into makeshift shelters.
Overall illegal crossings along the southern border have also declined recently. While the termination of the Title 42 public health restrictions on migration on May 11 were expected to fuel a massive rise in migrant arrivals, unlawful border crossings have instead plunged to roughly 3,000 after peaking at 10,000.
HHS’ processing of unaccompanied minors has been under scrutiny under the Biden administration due to a marked increase in cases of migrant teens working dangerous and grueling jobs after being released from government custody. Their jobs in factories, meat plants and construction sites violate federal child labor laws, which severely restrict the type of physical work minors can do.
After The New York Times published an investigation into these cases earlier this year, the administration announced it would improve the vetting of adults who sponsor migrant children out of government custody, and ramp up efforts to prosecute cases of child exploitation in worksites.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents found 146 pounds of cocaine hidden in an ice cream maker, officials announced on Thursday.
Agents stopped a 1995 Ford F-150 pickup truck headed to the U.S. from Mexico at the Bridge of the Americas cargo facility on June 19, officials said in a news release. After taking an X-ray of the vehicle, a customs dog smelled a commercial ice cream maker in the truck’s bed and alerted agents about the equipment. Officials found 56 bundles of cocaine in the ice cream maker, the news release said.
The driver, a 43-year-old Mexican man, was turned over to Texas law enforcement, officials said.
The acting El Paso Port Director Luis Mejia said, “Seizures like this remind us all that drugs can be concealed almost anywhere.”
In recent months, drug traffickers have attempted to conceal narcotics in unusual containers to evade detection. In June, an anti-drug unit in Uruguay found cocaine hidden in surfboards bound from South America to Europe. A total of 90 pounds of cocaine was found in five of the boards.
In May, Italian police found three tons of cocaine hidden in a banana shipment. Stacked in refrigerated silver containers, the 78 tons of bananas hiding the cocaine were coming from Ecuador and being shipped to Armenia, according to Italian officials.
The same week, South Carolina law enforcement found cocaine behind “what they thought was a pregnant woman’s belly.” The woman ran when officials questioned her and drugs fell from her fake rubber stomach.
El Paso, Texas — A federal judge in Florida on Thursday temporarily blocked the Biden administration from continuing a migrant release policy designed to alleviate overcrowding at immigration holding facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The ruling came just hours before the Title 42 border restrictions expired at 11:59 p.m. EDT Thursday, raising concerns about severe overcrowding in already over-capacity Border Patrol migrant facilities.
U.S. District Judge Kent Wetherell ordered the Biden administration to halt the quick migrant release policy at the same it discontinued the Title 42 pandemic-era order, granting a request by Republican officials in Florida.
Migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. from Mexico are detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the border on May 6, 2023, in San Luis, Arizona.
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In March, Wetherell also blocked a similar Biden administration migrant release policy in a ruling on a lawsuit brought by the Florida attorney general.
Florida is arguing that this new policy is also illegal.
Wetherell’s order will expire in 14 days in order to give the Biden administration time to seek an emergency stay on the ruling. Another hearing in the case is scheduled for May 19.
In a filing opposing the request by Florida, the Biden administration said the number of migrants stuck in Border Patrol custody could soar to 45,000 by the end of the month if the expedited releases were blocked in court. On Thursday, Border Patrol had nearly 25,000 migrants in its custody, despite only having the capacity to hold several thousand individuals in stations, processing centers and tents.
The ruling raises the prospect of even higher numbers of migrants being stranded in Border Patrol custody in dangerously overcrowded conditions amid a spike in migrant arrivals.
In the lead-up to the expiration of Title 42, daily migrant crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border have reached record levels, with border officials averaging roughly 10,000 apprehensions per day.
Earlier on Thursday, Border Patrol Raul Ortiz told CBS News that another 60,000 migrants were waiting on the Mexican side of the border, hoping to enter the U.S.
The memo at the center of Thursday’s ruling allows Border Patrol to conduct expedited releases of some migrants without giving them court notices as part of an effort to reduce overcrowding in detention facilities.
Migrants who are found to not be a risk to public safety or national security could be considered for this quick release under the humanitarian parole authority. Those released under this policy, which has been used before during spikes in migrant crossings, will be instructed to check in at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices across the country so they can receive a court notice there.
In an interview Thursday, Ortiz, the Border Patrol chief, said the expedited release policy was helping his agency reduce overcrowding, noting that some border sectors were “over capacity.”
“We’re working closely with our NGO partners, our communities to make sure that we release those migrants after they’ve been vetted and cleared, and they pose no significant threat to the community,” he said.
The U.S. government announced Monday it would dispatch Border Patrol agents to apprehend migrants in El Paso, Texas who crossed the southern border surreptitiously, saying those taken into custody could be expelled, detained or placed in deportation proceedings.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said agents in El Paso would launch an operation Tuesday to apprehend migrants who can’t prove that they had been processed and released by the agency after crossing into the U.S.
The operation is designed to target many of the thousands of migrants who have been sleeping on the streets of El Paso amid a spike in migrant crossings in the lead-up to the end of the Title 42 public health restrictions on Thursday.
“As we have said repeatedly, individuals who do not have a lawful basis to remain will be removed,” Troy Miller, the acting head of CBP, said in a statement. “Individuals should not listen to the lies of smugglers and instead use lawful pathways to protection.”
Those found without U.S. government documents in El Paso will be processed so officials can determine whether they should be expelled under Title 42 or placed in regular deportation proceedings and released with a notice to appear in court. Officials said migrants found to be threats to national security or public safety would be sent to long-term detention centers.
When migrants are released from U.S. custody at the border, they receive official government documents, which can include immigration court notices or instructions to check in with immigration officials in their respective destinations.
Officials said they would generally refrain from apprehending migrants near locations known as “protected areas” that provide essential services, such as shelters.
El Paso has been struggling with a sharp increase in migrant arrivals in recent days that prompted local officials to issue a disaster declaration.
The Border Patrol averaged over 8,700 daily migrant apprehensions during a three-day period in the past week, a 67% jump from the 5,200 average in March, according to the agency’s chief, Raul Ortiz.
Department of Homeland Security officials have said the number of migrants crossing the southern border each day could surpass 10,000 after Title 42 lapses.
Officials in border communities such as El Paso and popular migrant destinations like New York City have implored the Biden administration to increase federal support for sheltering and feeding large groups of migrants. Centrist Democrats and Republicans in Washington, D.C., meanwhile, have accused the Biden administration of failing to properly prepare for the end of Title 42.
But the administration has argued that recently announced measures that pair increased deportations and asylum restrictions with expanded opportunities for migrants to enter the U.S. legally will eventually deter migrants from journeying to the southern border.
Migrant crossings at the southern U.S. border are likely to jump when a pandemic-era policy expires next week. Omar Villafranca is at the border, where officials are struggling with those who are already there.
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A person was shot and killed by U.S. Border Patrol agents in El Paso Tuesday afternoon, authorities said. The victim was in the custody of Border Patrol at the time.
The shooting occurred at 12:45 p.m. local time at the Ysleta Border Patrol Station, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said in a news release Tuesday evening.
The victim was transported to a hospital, and later died, CBP confirmed to CBS News.
The victim was not immediately identified. The circumstances that led up to the shooting were not released.
In a statement, the Mexican Consulate in El Paso said the victim was a Mexican national who was being processed for criminal charges.
The FBI, El Paso Police Department and U.S. U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional Responsibility are involved in the investigation.
