Biden Opens New Child Facility in Texas

Editors Note: Joe Biden has backtracked with his immigration laws and has decided to put children back in cages. This article was originally published by Tsuru for Solidarity.

On Friday, The Biden Administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) announced they will reopen a so-called “Influx Care Facility” to house migrant children in Carrizo Springs, TX. The federal government reopened this site that previously was intended to hold up to 700 children ages 13 to 17 just one month after reopening another facility in Pecos, TX that had also previously been placed on warm status. While the Biden Administration claims the facilities will provide housing, education, and mental healthcare for arriving unaccompanied minors, advocates insist this is a move in the wrong direction.

Carrizo Springs, Pecos, and at large the policy of mass warehousing of unaccompanied minors poses a threat to child welfare. Over the past three years, numerous whistleblower reports and advocate accounts have exposed a pattern of abuse detailing numerous human rights violations at these facilities, including physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. At Pecos, children had rancid food and lacked safe and sanitary conditions. Most recently, for example, one outside observer described Fort Bliss as a “hellhole” where she observed 900 children unable to shower or change their clothes crammed into a single tent, many of whom were crying or visibly distressed.

Instead of shutting this infamous site down, ORR has placed Fort Bliss on “warm status,” meaning it could be reactivated anytime like these two facilities. The abuse of children in these detention facilities is not limited to isolated individualized incidents with staff but rather as the sordid history of these sites shows a systematic failure of Biden and prior administrations.

Despite all this, in 2023 with the end of Title 42, the Biden Administration signaled its intent to expand its network of influx sites via a request for proposals “In anticipation of Title 42,[…] the Government is seeking ‘solutions’ for 500 to 5,000 capacity.” The arrival of children in Carrizo Springs and Pecos should be understood as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to expand the network of mass detention sites for unaccompanied children.

As a national coalition of legal providers, community advocates, and impacted people, we are outraged by the federal government’s continuing mass warehousing of migrant children. The Biden Administration’s continued reliance on mass congregate warehousing of children indicates a lack of foresight and concern for child welfare. The Administration’s actions seed a deep level of distrust about the potential future policies regarding immigration.

“As a Japanese American born in a concentration camp (Tule Lake), I know firsthand the impact detention has on children and am deeply concerned about the lifelong impact these sites will have on their mental health,” said Dr. Satsuki Ina, a psychotherapist specializing in community trauma. “Let me be clear – a cage is a cage. The Biden Administration must abandon the use of mass detention sites for children to stop repeating history.”

“In 2021, I witnessed the horrors of the ‘emergency intake site’ at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas,” said Carolina Canizales, Senior Texas Strategist at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. ” This mega warehouse facility was faulty and abusive to the 2,000 migrant children that it housed. Large-capacity facilities are a failure because no community will ever be ready to provide legal, mental health, or reunification support to thousands of children in a short amount of time. The Carrizo Springs facility is no different and is only a matter of time before something goes terribly wrong.” 

“Large-scale detention facilities are wholly inappropriate for children of all ages, and inherently harmful for any amount of time, as has been well documented by health professionals and child welfare advocates,” said Marcela Hernandez, Organizing and Membership Director at Detention Watch Network, “We urge the Biden administration to stop these failed and dangerous detention policies that inherently puts children at risk and focus on family reunification.”

Take action on child detention by joining our work! The Child and Family Detention campaign meets bi-weekly! Our next meeting is on Tuesday, October 24th at 9pm Eastern / 6 pm Pacific.

For more information on the campaign, email Becca Asaki, our community organizer, at basaki@tsuruforsolidarity.org.

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