United States to house 20,000 migrant children on military bases: report
Updated
Officials in the United States are making arrangements to house about 20,000 migrant children on four military bases in Texas and Arkansas, The New York Times has reported.
Key points:
- The Pentagon spokesman said the bases would host "unaccompanied alien children"
- However the newspaper reports other agencies gave conflicting explanations
- The move comes after Donald Trump reversed the child separation policy
Pentagon spokesman Lt Col Michael Andrews told The New York Times the bases would house "unaccompanied alien children", although the paper reported other federal agencies as giving conflicting information on the matter.
The move has added to the chaos on the US-Mexico border following US President Donald Trump's reversal of a policy that separated more than 2,300 children from their parents over the past several weeks.
It was part of the Trump administration's zero-tolerance immigration policy — a signature campaign promise of Mr Trump — but the reversal has created uncertainty for the migrants and the federal agencies in charge of prosecuting and detaining them.
A senior Trump administration official said that about 500 of the more than 2,300 children separated from their families at the border have been reunited since May.
It was unclear how many of the children were still being detained with their families.
Federal agencies were working to set up a centralised reunification process for the remaining separated children and their families at a detention centre in Texas, the anonymous official said.
'Republicans should stop wasting their time on immigration': Trump
As reports swirled, Mr Trump told his fellow Republicans in Congress to "stop wasting their time" on immigration legislation until after November, dismissing his party's struggle to surmount internal divisions.
Stubborn differences between conservative and more moderate Republicans in the House have stalled immigration legislation on Capitol Hill, with a vote on a compromise measure delayed until next week.
Mr Trump said that even if a measure passed, it was doomed in the Senate.
Despite Republican control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the party's slim majority in the latter chamber makes some Democratic support necessary to pass most legislation.
The US House of Representatives on Thursday rejected a bill favoured by conservatives that would have halted the practice of splitting up families and addressed a range of other immigration issues.
The House also postponed, likely until next week, a vote on a more moderate bill in order to try to drum up more support.
Both bills have received backing from Mr Trump but are opposed by Democrats and immigration advocacy groups.
The two bills would fund Mr Trump's proposed wall along the country's shared border with Mexico and also reduce legal migration.
Families reunited, others remain split
A seven-year-old boy and his migrant mother separated a month ago were reunited on Friday after she sued in federal court, and the Justice Department agreed to release the child.
The two were reunited at about 2:30am (local time) at Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland.
The mother, Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia, had filed for political asylum after crossing the border with her son, Darwin, following a trek from Guatemala.
She said she started crying when the two were reunited and said she was never going to be away from him again.
Other immigrants who remained locked up and separated from their families struggled to stay in touch with children who are in many cases hundreds of kilometres apart.
ABC/wires
Topics: world-politics, immigration, donald-trump, family-and-children, united-states, mexico
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