Amid faint words and fainter actions from the Biden administration that have failed to slow the flow of illegal immigrants into Texas, a new facility has opened to deal with the unrelenting migrant surge.
The facility, named Delphi, is being opened in Donna, Texas, where a vastly overcrowded Customs and Border Protection facility currently exists, according to Axios.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement that the Delphi Emergency Intake Site in Donna can provide shelter for up to 1,500 unaccompanied illegal immigrants between the ages of 13 and 17, according to The Hill.
The first 375 occupants of the facility were shifted from the CBP facility to the new one on Tuesday.
The Donna CBP facility has made headlines because of the overcrowded conditions there.
These are the pictures the Biden administration doesn’t want the American people to see. This is why they won’t allow the press.
This is the CBP facility in Donna, Texas.
This is a humanitarian and a public health crisis. pic.twitter.com/UlibmvAeGN
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 26, 2021
Federal protocols for handling unaccompanied minors who cross the border illegally call for them to be held in the custody of HHS prior to release. Border Patrol facilities have been overcrowded while the Biden administration ramped up the ability of HHS to take in the children.
As of Monday, 4,231 children were in the custody of Customs and Border Protection, while 15,193 were in HHS facilities, the Biden administration said.
Axios reported that despite the opening of the new facility, pods in the CBP facility in Donna that were intended to hold about 48 migrants now hold more than 300. In one case, 500 people are in one pod, the report said.
The temporary facility is described by HHS as a short-term response, according to KRGV-TV.
In the long term, the department is looking to lease space at some state-licensed child care facilities to house unaccompanied minors.
1/These are @CBPRGV migrant youth holding tents which @HHSGov expanded and today dubbed “Delphi Emergency Intake Site (EIS)” in Donna, Texas, shifting 375 “UCs” (unaccompanied children) ages 13 to 17 to the new 1,500-bed portion of the same complex. pic.twitter.com/xNpF1OFwUP
— Molly Hennessy-Fiske (@mollyhf) April 6, 2021
Two court-appointed monitors recently called conditions in border facilities “stretched beyond thin” and experiencing “profound overcrowding,” according to CNN.
Dr. Paul Wise and Andrea Ordin were named by a federal judge to examine conditions. A report they filed said that in the CBP facility in Donna, “no space remains between sleeping mats.”
“The open spaces designed for walking, reading, or play are also fully occupied by mats,” the report said. “The showers designed for an occupancy of 1,000 are occupied all day, with some children reporting that they did not receive showers for days at a time.
“Recreation time is attempted during the time individual pods are being cleaned, but the length of time and supervision of the minors varies significantly depending upon the census.”
Biden administration adding new intake space for unaccompanied migrant minors next to the overcrowded border facility in Donna, Texas https://t.co/ybZ3QGhFyF
— Stef Kight (@StefWKight) April 6, 2021
The report noted that between December 2020 and February 2021, CBP had a 337 percent increase in encounters with families crossing the border illegally.
The number of unaccompanied minors CBP encountered rose 89 percent in that time, the report said.
Did you know that The Western Journal now publishes some content in Spanish as well as English, for international audiences? Click here to read this article on The Western Journal en Español!
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.