President Joe Biden has asked Congress for $2.7 billion in border-related funding, including money to create new facilities to house illegal immigrant families as they navigate an “expedited” process to determine whether they will be granted asylum in the U.S. or deported.
The administration has requested $40 billion in emergency funding, including roughly $2.7 billion for the Department of Homeland Security’s border programs, Axios reported.
“We do not view this as family detention,” an unnamed DHS official told Axios.
However, though family members could come and go from these facilities during the day, they would be required to check back in each evening and spend the night at the facility, the official said.
Officials told Axios that the new program would relieve the stress on current shelters located near the U.S. border while also allowing the government to better track families that enter the country illegally.
The facilities may be run by independent contractors, potentially including non-governmental organizations.
Axios contextualized the new initiative as part of ongoing efforts by the federal government to cope with the fact that more families are crossing the southern border into the U.S. illegally.
Until roughly 10 years ago, almost all border crossers were single adults.
Most government facilities for detailing illegal immigrants were not designed for families or minor children.
Complicating the problem, U.S. courts have ruled that minors can be detained for no more than 20 days.
It was unknown whether the new facilities, which are similar to those used in some European countries, would allow for longer detention.
In 2021, the Biden administration replaced family detention with programs using “tracking technology and check-ins by phone,” while Immigration and Customs Enforcement has worked to speed up deportation of families who fail to qualify for asylum.
According to The Daily Caller, nearly 1.8 million illegal immigrants have been “encountered” by U.S. Customs and Border Protection this fiscal year, according to federal government data.
That followed nearly 2.4 million in fiscal 2022 and almost 1.75 million the year prior to that.
And those numbers do not include the illegal immigrants who managed to avoid contact with the CBP altogether.
Fox News reported that number to be in the neighborhood of 600,000 in 2022 alone.
Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed the “border czar” by President Joe Biden in March, 2021, so most of that occurred on her watch.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.