Thread: All migrant teens transferred out of Tornillo tent camp

U.S. lawmaker: All migrant teens transferred out of Tornillo tent camp


The HHS inspector general warned in a November report of “significant vulnerabilities” at the Tornillo camp, including inadequate criminal background checks for staff members. (Andres Leighton/AP)

By Maria Sacchetti
January 11 at 1:35 PM

The Trump administration has removed all teenagers from a giant tent camp for underage migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas, former congressman Beto O’Rourke and Rep. Will Hurd said Friday, weeks after a federal watchdog warned the facility had “serious safety and health” concerns.

U.S. Health and Human Services had no immediate comment. A day earlier, spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said 850 minors remained at the desert facility in Tornillo as of this week but would be released to sponsors or sent to other facilities by the end of January.

“BREAKING: I just talked with the management at the Tornillo facility - the last kid just left. This tent city should never have stood in the first place but it is welcome news that it will be gone,” Hurd, a Republican who represents a swath of the U.S. side of the Mexican border, said in a tweet.

O’Rourke, an El Paso Democrat who pressured HHS to close the facility, also tweeted: “The last child has left Tornillo.

“It’s good for these kids and their families. And it shows the power of people who showed up for them and shared with the rest of the country that we were locking up immigrant kids for months at a time. You made this happen.”

Three weeks ago, the camp held 2,800 teens.

Nearly 6,200 minors have cycled through Tornillo since the camp opened in June. (Andres Leighton/AP)

“Our goal is to close the temporary unaccompanied alien children program facility in Tornillo as quickly but as safely as possible,” Wolfe said in a statement Thursday.

Nearly 6,200 minors have cycled through Tornillo since the camp opened in June on a dry, sprawling patch of borderland outside of El Paso. The government says teens spent an average of 36 days at the facility.

Tornillo initially opened with 30 days’ funding and swelled over the next seven months into a 120-tent camp with room for 3,800 people. As the number of migrant children in government custody reached a record high late last year, HHS was slated to pay up to $367.9 million between mid-September and December to operate the shelter, according to federal records.

In November, HHS Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson warned of “significant vulnerabilities” at the Tornillo camp, including inadequate criminal background checks for staff members.

Advocates for immigrants cheered reports that Tornillo is closing, but worried that the government is still holding teens in large emergency shelters, such as a Homestead, Fla., facility that is adding 1,000 new beds, for a total of 2,350.

Taylor Levy, legal coordinator at Annunciation House, an El Paso nonprofit that aids migrants, said Tornillo was “much too large” to house teenagers.

Jonathan Ryan, CEO and president of Raices, a Texas-based organization that offers legal aid to migrants, said the tent city was a “monstrosity of an idea.”

BCFS, a San Antonio nonprofit that runs the camp, did not respond to requests for comment. The nonprofit specializes in providing emergency housing after natural disasters; some of the tents at Tornillo had sheltered people left homeless by Hurricane Harvey.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended more than 50,000 unaccompanied child migrants last fiscal year, up from 41,435 the year before.

Federal law requires Border Patrol agents to quickly turn over unaccompanied minors to one of more than 100 shelters overseen by HHS’s Administration for Children and Families. They stay there until case workers place the children with a parent or guardian to await a decision on whether they can stay in the United States.

But critics said HHS shelter space also was tight because of new background-check requirements that made it more difficult to find and vet sponsors for the children.

Last year the Trump administration mandated that all residents of a would-be sponsor’s household submit fingerprints to the FBI. The government also said HHS could share information about potential sponsors with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which had not been done in the past.

The new policies left some potential sponsors reluctant to come forward, or unable to convince their housemates to provide fingerprints, because they feared deportation, advocates said.

Government shelters swelled to more than 14,600 children, up from 9,200 when President Trump took office two years ago.

HHS eased the fingerprinting requirement last month, saying it generally did not identify new threats to children’s welfare. By this week, the number of minors in custody had fallen to about 11,400, Wolfe said.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...=.5b86572eb638

Trump to triple size of Texas tent camp for illegal alien children

Transfer them to their Consulate for deportation!!!

Trump didn't deport any of them.
He released them in the U.S.

Texas tent city to close as migrant teens in U.S. government custody released



By Julio-Cesar Chavez
,Reuters•January 11, 2019

Texas tent city to close as migrant teens in U.S. government custody released
More

By Julio-Cesar Chavez

EL PASO, Texas (Reuters) - The U.S. government has moved out all the migrant teens who were living in a tent city in the Texas desert and is set to close it down, according to the organization running the facility, after the shelter became a controversial symbol of President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.
BCFS, a San Antonio-based nonprofit running the temporary shelter for the U.S. government, said on Friday that "there are no more children in Tornillo," but did not say if they had all been released to sponsors or had been moved to other facilities.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had said there were more than 850 migrants being held there as recently as Jan. 6 but did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the releases.

The shelter opened on June 14 to handle the ballooning number of unaccompanied children being kept in detention.

Immigration advocates raised concerns about how long minors were being held in the makeshift tents and some protesters had set up camp near the facility.

At its peak in December the sprawling field of beige colored tents housed 2,800 teenagers, mostly from Central America, who crossed the border alone.

Trump has called the increasing number of children and families crossing into the United States a humanitarian crisis. This and his assertion that immigrants and drugs are streaming across the southern border have fueled his demand for a border wall, despite statistics that show illegal crossings are at a 20-year low and that many drug shipments are likely are smuggled through legal ports of entry.

On Thursday Trump traveled to Texas to press his case for the wall, even as the government remained partly shut down in a dispute with Democrats over funding for it.

The government is legally limited in how long it can detain immigrant minors who cross the border but a policy to increase vetting of potential sponsors has lead to long delays in processing their cases, leaving some children languishing in government care for months.

As of Jan. 6 there were still approximately 11,400 unaccompanied children in HHS custody across the country, the government said.

Once minors are released, they can pursue their immigration cases while living in the United States, with many seeking to apply for asylum.

"Our goal is to close Tornillo as quickly but as safely as possible," Victoria Palmer, an HHS spokeswoman, said earlier this week.

Protesters who have been monitoring the camp said they have seen a steady outflow of infrastructure like tents. BCFS confirmed to Reuters it was working to demobilize the facility and removing shelter trailers and tents as more children leave Tornillo.

"This tent city should never have stood in the first place but it is welcome news that it will be gone," tweeted Will Hurd, a Republican U.S. congressman from Texas.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/texas-ten...191903850.html

TRUMP...ENFORCE THE "HUMAN TRAFFICKING BILL" YOU JUST SIGNED!


SEND THOSE UAC'S BACK HOME WITHIN 48 HOURS.

IT DOES NOT MATTER IF CARTELS, GANGS OR THEIR LOUSY PARENTS TRAFFICKED THEM.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING IS HUMAN TRAFFICKING...SEND THEM BACK HOME!

SEND THEM INTO THE CARE & CUSTODY OF THEIR PRESIDENT WITHIN 48 HOURS TO TAKE CARE OF OR THAT BILL MEANS NOTHING!

SEND THE MESSAGE LOUD & CLEAR...WE WILL NOT ACCEPT THESE CHILDREN WHO HAVE BEEN HUMAN TRAFFICKED AND DUMPED OVER OUR BORDER!

SEND THEM TO THEIR PRESIDENT!

MORE BOGUS BILLS AND LAWS THAT ARE NOT OBEYED OR ENFORCED!

DO NOT BECOME PART OF THE SWAMP!

And catch & release continues .......

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Trump didn't deport any of them.
He released them in the U.S.

After all we have witnessed in the least 2 years, especially the last 2 months, does that really surprise anyone?

MORE LIES...not even enforcing HIS Human Trafficking Bill by sending them directly back home to STOP this human trafficking of sending THOUSANDS of children over our border!

Why go to work and fight like morons to sign bills and laws YOU do not enforce! And all the while, you take our money to pay your paychecks!

WE NEED A USA YELLOW VEST MOVEMENT!

Originally Posted by Beezer

MORE LIES...not even enforcing HIS Human Trafficking Bill by sending them directly back home to STOP this human trafficking of sending THOUSANDS of children over our border!

Why go to work and fight like morons to sign bills and laws YOU do not enforce! And all the while, you take our money to pay your paychecks!

WE NEED A USA YELLOW VEST MOVEMENT!

This new Anti-Human Trafficking Law doesn't change US law on the admissions of minors, Trump isn't violating the new law. The new law is a funding mechanism to fund training, education and anti-trafficking activity here but mostly abroad. It allocates $430 million, mostly to the US State Department, to stop it there before it gets here. Yes, over time it will or should help a lot, but there's nothing in this legislation that changes any laws we have here now that forces our government to take them in. All those laws still stand. We need to repeal those laws. Trump tried to do that with his DACA deal bill that had the 70 legislative actions, but as you know, that bill failed to pass and we opposed it because of the DACA component.

Not sure how we can repeal the UAC law, but we desperately need to find a way. Trump could try issuing an order to suspend it, like he did with the asylum law for illegal aliens claiming asylum after they've entered illegally. You never know, Supreme Court might agree with us that the UAC law is kidnapping and as such is aiding and abetting human trafficking and all the criminal organizations its serves, and as such is unconstitutional in its purpose and outcome, which it surely is.

Originally Posted by Judy

Trump could try issuing an order to suspend it, like he did with the asylum law for illegal aliens claiming asylum after they've entered illegally. You never know, Supreme Court might agree with us that the UAC law is kidnapping and as such is aiding and abetting human trafficking and all the criminal organizations its serves, and as such is unconstitutional in its purpose and outcome, which it surely is.

Is this being enforced? We know they are still entering illegally. Who knows if they are allowed to apply for asylum. I haven't seen any reports of them being deported immediately. Apparently they are just being turned loose. So what did we gain from that law, if they are simply on one of those buses and turned loose?