Government to spend $352 per night on hotel beds for 80,000 migrant families
Government to spend $352 per night on hotel beds for 80,000 migrant families
by Anna Giaritelli, Homeland Security Reporter |
| April 13, 2021 04:35 PM
The U.S. government is spending $352.64 per hotel bed per day to house the 80,000 migrant families that it anticipates will come across the border between now and September, according to a federal document obtained by the Washington Examiner.
That daily rate is going to add up quickly and eventually reach $86,947,271.04, the amount of the contract that the Biden administration awarded to a nonprofit group last month on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Exactly 1,239 beds at seven hotels located in Arizona and Texas have been rented out for 199 days, or six and a half months. The federal contract dubs the hotels as “emergency family reception sites” where families will be held up to three days before being released into the United States, with or without documents mandating they appear in court down the road.
The administration's use of the rooms is an emergency measure to respond to the surge of families illegally crossing the border and being taken into custody.
TRUMP DHS LEADERS SAY BIDEN 'FACILITATING' BORDER CRISIS RATHER THAN STOPPING IT
The spending is likely to prove controversial. Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, sparked a controversy last month when she claimed the ICE hotel contract would ding taxpayers $395 for every night it held a family in a hotel. In the end, her estimate was not far off.
https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images..._ke_bigger.jpg
Lauren Boebert
@laurenboebert
So Biden is spending $86,000,000 to purchase hotel rooms for 1,200 illegal alien families for six months.By that math, he’s spending around $395 a night per room.How many of you have stayed in a $395/night hotel room?
9:05 PM · Mar 21, 2021
"So Biden is spending $86,000,000 to purchase hotel rooms for 1,200 illegal alien families for six months," Boebert wrote on Twitter. "By that math, he's spending around $395 a night per room. How many of you have stayed in a $395/night hotel room?"
Two of the hotels holding families are in El Paso, where similar two-and-a-half-star and three-star hotels in the same locations are available this week at nightly rates of $91 to $179.
Still, the nightly cost includes significantly more than just the lodging at the hotels, which include Hilton Hotels, Best Western International, Choice Hotels, and InterContinental Hotels Group. When asked about the costs, an ICE spokeswoman wrote in an email that the fixed-price contract covers transportation of the families from the Border Patrol stations that they are initially held at after being apprehended on the border to the hotels, as well as any emergency transportation from the hotel to medical facilities like hospitals and rides to airports or bus stations for families to travel to their final destinations nationwide.
The $352 price tag also factors in recreational activities for each family in their room, meals, medical and mental health services, laundry, cultural and legal orientation, and the cost of staff who are trained to work with people who have been through trauma. Immigration documents given to families by the Border Patrol and ICE will be explained by interpreters, and translators will be available to explain the legal process in addition to lawyers. Families are enrolled in ICE programs that allow people to remain out of detention.
Texas-based Family Endeavors was given an $87 million no-bid contract in March to house families even as a massive family residential center in Texas sits mostly vacant as the Biden administration opts to release families quickly into the U.S. rather than detaining them the maximum 20 days permitted.
Hotels holding families are overseen by the Family Endeavors nonprofit group and are not required to be licensed because they are not holding people more than 72 hours.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...grant-families
