Officials are scrambling to build up capacity to care for some 14,000 now in federal custody.
WASHINGTON — Somehow, they didn’t see it coming. Within weeks of Inauguration Day on Jan.20, the Biden administration had reversed many of the most maligned Trump-era immigration policies, including deporting children seeking asylum who arrived alone at the U.S.-Mexico border and forcing migrants to wait in Mexico as they made their case to stay in the United States. While the administration was working on immigration legislation to address long-term problems, it didn’t have an on-the-ground plan to manage a surge of migrants. Career immigration officials had warned there could be a surge after the presidential election and the news that the Trump policies, widely viewed as cruel, were being reversed. Now officials are scrambling to build up capacity to care for some 14,000 migrants now in federal custody – and more likely on the way – and the administration finds itself on its heels in the face of criticism that it should have been better prepared to deal with a predictable predicament. “They should have forecasted for space (for young migrants) more quickly,” said Ronald Vitiello, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and chief of Border Patrol who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations. “And I think in hindsight, maybe they should have waited until they had additional shelter space before they changed the policies.” The situation at the southern border is complex. Since Biden’s inauguration, the U.S. has seen a dramatic spike in the number of people encountered by border officials. There were 18,945 family members and 9,297 unaccompanied children encountered in February – an increase of 168 percent and 63 percent, respectively, from the month before, according to the Pew Research Center. That creates an enormous logistical challenge because children, in particular, require higher standards of care and coordination across agencies. Still, the encounters of both unaccompanied minors and families are lower than they were at various points during the Trump administration, including in spring 2019. That May, authorities encountered more than 55,000 migrant children, including 11,500 unaccompanied minors, and about 84,500 migrants traveling in family units. Career immigration officials, overwhelmed by the earlier surges, have long warned the flow of migrants to the border could ramp up again. Migrant children are sent from border holding cells to other government facilities until they are released to a sponsor.
