The Trump administration has been housing more than 500 migrant children in tents near Tornillo, Texas, since August, with 46 held there since June, a Friday court filing submitted in a Los Angeles federal court by civil rights groups representing migrant children has revealed, according to Reuters.
The filing seeks to oppose a government request to exempt the Department of Health and Human Services's (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is tasked with overseeing the care of immigrant children in federal custody, from oversight by a court-ordered monitor.
Under the 1997 Flores agreement, officials are required to move immigrant children out of detention centers within 20 days, releasing them into the care of guardians or state-licensed shelters.
However, it appears that migrant children have been held at the Tornillo "tent city," which does not qualify as a state-licensed shelter, for significantly longer than the 20-day period.
Children taken into the care of state-licensed shelters would receive schooling and access to legal counsel, human rights lawyer Leah Chavla, who visited Tornillo on September 24, told Reuters. But, she said, "none of the children" at the site "were receiving schooling or regular mental health care, among other benefits to which they would be entitled if they were placed in a licensed shelter."
The tent city was initially opened in June as a temporary emergency measure after the U.S. saw a sharp rise in the number of children being taken into ORR custody, in part due to the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" child separation policy, which saw more than 2,500 children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The tent city, which has 3,800 beds and was holding around 1,500 children as of October 12, does not include any of the dozens of children who were separated from their families and have yet to be reunited with them or taken into more permanent care, according to Reuters.
In September, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it planned to withdraw from the Flores agreement, which could put at risk the current limit on the number of days an immigrant child can be held in a detention center.
The Trump administration has repeatedly railed against the agreement, arguing that it has affected its ability to enforce immigration law by limiting its ability to hold undocumented immigrants in custody until they can be deported.
Since his 2016 election campaign, President Donald Trump has made it his mission to crack down on illegal immigration in the U.S.
On Monday, the U.S. leader vowed to cut or significantly reduce foreign assistance to Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, after alleging that the Central American countries had failed to do enough to deter a caravan of migrants making their way toward the U.S. to seek asylum. The caravan, which has grown to as many as 7,000 participants, reached the Guatemala-Mexico border this past weekend.
The HHS, ORR and DOJ have not immediately responded to a request for comment from Newsweek for this article.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Chantal Da Silva is Chief Correspondent at Newsweek, with a focus on immigration and human rights. She is a Canadian-British journalist whose work ... Read more
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