More than 3,250 children reported detained at border as number triples in two weeks
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10.37am GMT
NBC News have carried some extra detail about the conditions in which the children are being kept, and it is not a ringing endorsement of a new dawn for immigration under Joe Biden’s administration:
Nearly half of the children — 1,400 — have been held beyond the three-day legal limit. The CBP holding cells, sometimes known as “hieleras,” or iceboxes, are not designed for children. They are typically small concrete rooms with concrete or metal benches and no beds. In addition, nearly 170 of the detained unaccompanied children are younger than 13, a source said.
Many of the children arriving at the border initially immigrated during the Trump administration but were expelled under an order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention meant to protect immigrants and U.S. residents from Covid-19. The Biden administration reversed the policy for unaccompanied children.
10.26am GMT
There’s a lot of focus in the US media this morning on the challenge the Biden administration is facing on the country’s southern border, with numbers of migrants increasing as the new president sets out on his stated aim of building a more humane immigration system. Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Michael Shear report for the New York Times in particular on a surge of unaccompanied children:
The number of migrant children in custody along the border has tripled in the past two weeks to more than 3,250, according to federal immigration agency documents obtained by The New York Times, and many of them are being held in jail-like facilities for longer than the three days allowed by law.
The problem for the administration is both the number of children crossing the border and what to do with them once they are in custody. Under the law, the children are supposed to be moved to shelters run by the Health and Human Services Department, but because of the pandemic the shelters until last week were limiting how many children they could accommodate.
10.20am GMT
Welcome to Tuesday’s live coverage of US politics. Here’s a catch-up on what happened yesterday, and what we might expect to see today…