1/ Biden deployed FEMA to the U.S.-Mexico border to help shelter and transfer thousands of unaccompanied migrant teens and children, who are currently being held in Customs and Border Protection detention facilities and tent shelters. There are roughly 4,000 children currently in CBP custody – a 25% increase from a week earlier. The Biden administration has struggled to expand Health and Human Services shelter capacity, where about 8,500 teens and children are currently being held. Unaccompanied minors continue to arrive more quickly than HHS officials can match them with sponsors. The current average time children spend in facilities designed to hold adults for 24 hours, has increased to 117 hours – 45 hours longer than the legal limit. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that a CBP facility is “no place for a child,” but that border agents are “working around the clock in difficult circumstances to take care of children temporarily in our care.” The White House, meanwhile, has declined to call the situation a “crisis” or label it a national emergency, which Trump did in 2019 to circumvent Congress and fund his border wall with money lawmakers refused to give him. (New York Times / NBC News / ABC News / Washington Post / Vox / CNN)
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2021/03/15/day-55/