Child migrants: What is happening at the US border?
- Published
The US is bracing for a 20-year high in numbers of migrants arriving at the southern border, including thousands of children who are being kept in government-run detention facilities that critics say are inhumane.
The record-breaking influx of children has left US immigration officials scrambling for solutions to a growing humanitarian crisis.
President Joe Biden has urged migrants not to attempt to travel to the US border - "Don't leave your town or city or community," he said in a recent interview - but with Donald Trump out of office, some believe immigration to the US is now more possible.
On 22 March, a Texas lawmaker released the first photos of the child detention camps from the Biden era.
How many children are being detained?
As of 21 March, US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents were holding more than 15,500 unaccompanied children in custody, according to US media.
Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has said these camps, which are often compared to jails or warehouses, are "no place for a child".
At least 5,000 children have been kept for over 72 hours, the legal limit after which they are meant to be transferred to the custody of health officials in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Mr Mayorkas blames pandemic restrictions and abnormally cold weather in Texas for the delay.
ORR facilities are generally better equipped to take children. The shelters feature play areas, classrooms and counselling services. The organisation is also tasked with finding families or homes where the children will remain until their immigration claim is heard by the courts.
In February, around 9,500 children who were not accompanied by their legal guardian were detained by American officials.
More than 100,000 people in total were stopped from trying to cross into the US that month.
What are conditions like?
In short, we don't know.
Journalists have not yet been permitted inside the camps since President Joe Biden took office in January, although the White House says they will be.
But lawyers who represent the children, and lawmakers who have toured the camps, say that they are being held in cramped and overcrowded conditions.
Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar, who visited a government-run tent city in Donna, Texas, holding 1,000 people, released the first photos of the camps to be taken during the Biden presidency.
The children are seen huddled together and sleeping in foil blankets on mattresses on the floor.
Children are being kept together so closely that they were able to reach out and touch their neighbour, activists say, adding that they have not been given adequate access to soap or food.
While in office, President Donald Trump faced outrage over the conditions inside border facilities holding children.
Images from inside those detention centres showed children overcrowded in metal cages, others sleeping under foil blankets.
Some of these Trump-era facilities - now renovated and upgraded - are being used again.
Despite concerns about coronavirus, health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have said these facilities can open at 100% capacity.
What is the US doing to handle the surge?
Officials are scrambling to find more government buildings to house the children and have called in help from charities and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which normally deals with natural disasters.
More than 1,500 children have arrived at a convention centre in downtown Dallas that normally hosts business conferences.
A military base in Virginia and a California airbase run by Nasa - the US space agency - had also been considered as possible locations.
Another camp originally set up for Texas oil workers in Midland is being managed by the American Red Cross charity. According to reports, few of the volunteers speak Spanish or have experience with vulnerable children.
The US has also placed thousands of radio and digital adverts in Spanish and Portuguese across South and Central America, warning people not to come, and have called for emergency talks with officials in Mexico and Guatemala to ask for help in stemming the flow of migrants.
The Biden administration has said that these detention centres are "no place for children" and that they are exploring alternatives to allow migrants to apply for asylum from their home country instead of attempting the dangerous journey.
Who are the migrants?
A pandemic health order means that most adults and families are being summarily turned away, but the Biden administration has allowed unaccompanied children under the age of 18 to enter the US while their claims are processed.
The majority are teenage boys. Many are travelling to meet family who have already migrated to the US.
False rumours of an "open border" have been spreading in often violent and poverty-stricken communities where most of the migrants come from, experts say. Many migrants have suggested that Mr Biden's victory over Mr Trump, who came into office on a pledge to crackdown on immigration, made them decide to attempt the perilous journey.
This is not the first surge of unaccompanied migrant children to trigger a crisis at the US-Mexico border. Similar humanitarian crises occurred in 2014 under President Barack Obama and in 2018 and 2019 under Mr Trump.
Why are they coming?
Experts say the reasons for migration are varied. Poverty, gang crime and natural disasters are some reasons that migrants may feel pushed to leave their home countries. Pandemic-related job losses could be adding to the surge this time, too.
Back-to-back hurricanes in Honduras last year may be one factor driving this year's surge, according to Mr Mayorkas.
Lawmakers in Washington are pointing fingers over cause of the current surge, which has steadily been growing since April 2020 and is on-track to reach a 20-year high.
"You can't help but notice that the administration changes, and there's a surge," said Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, echoing others in his party that have claimed that Mr Biden's promises of immigration reform have fuelled the increase in numbers.
How do Biden policies differ from Trump?
Under a pandemic-related health order called Title 42, the previous president's administration automatically deported anyone caught illegally crossing the border.
Mr Biden has applied the order to adults and families, but not to unaccompanied children.
Mr Trump had previously sought to deter immigration by arresting migrant families and separating the children - including infants and babies - to be housed with minors who had not been brought to the border by their parent or legal guardian.
The so-called "zero tolerance" policy drew widespread outrage and led Mr Trump to issue an executive order in June 2018 that halted the family separation policy.