In a news release on Saturday, Department of Homeland Security (HHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said FEMA was being deployed “to help receive, shelter and transport the children” over the next 90 days, according to Reuters.
The move to bring in FEMA illustrates the scope of what has become a humanitarian and political crisis for President Joe Biden’s administration due to the surge in the number of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico. Added to the mix is the COVID-19 crisis already a year old.
On taking office Biden moved to reverse some of his predecessor’s restrictive immigration policies. The Biden administration has so far continued to rely on a public health authority invoked by the Trump administration to swiftly expel most migrant adults and some families without a court hearing.
However, it has allowed unaccompanied children to continue their proceedings in the U.S., as outlined by U.S. law. And because shelter capacity had been cut by 40 percent to limit the spread of the coronavirus, there are not enough beds to cover the surge in the number of children crossing the border.
Republicans are blaming the crisis on Biden’s policy changes and pledge to undo Trump-era immigration policies. However, the DHS attributes the surge to poverty, violence, and food insecurity in Central America, which was hit by two devastating, back-to-back hurricanes that made landfall late last year.
In January, when Biden became president, 5,871 unaccompanied children crossed the border – up from 4,995 in December 2020, according to data from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), reports the BBC.
Additionally, CBP also reported an average of nearly 3,000 arrests per day in January 2021 compared with an average of about 1,800 arrests in January 2020.
As of Friday, the HHS refugee office had approximately 8,800 unaccompanied children in custody. A FEMA spokesperson told CBS News they are working with HHS, which oversees the refugee agency, to “quickly expand capacity for safe and appropriate shelter, and to provide food, water, and basic medical care.”
