Thread: Houston school may house illegals with mayor's blessing

Federal officials plan to tour a vacant Houston middle school Tuesday morning as a possible site that could house immigrant children recently caught crossing the border if necessary, an HISD spokeswoman confirmed.

Sheleah Reed, of the Houston Independent School District, described the visit to Terrell Middle School as a preliminary step in case federal officials decide they want a local shelter for the recent influx of unaccompanied children.

"In a large city like Houston, everyone's saying, 'If there needs to be a place to house these students, what facilities are available?'" Reed said. "Tomorrow's tour is not necessarily a show and tell. It's a working tour. Here's a facility we have. Here's what it looks like."

HISD closed Terrell Middle School in 2001 and now uses the northeast Houston facility for storage, Reed said. A charter school also occupied the space temporarily.

"I don't think it would take a lot to get it in place," she said. "But I think that's what tomorrow's tour is for."

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and other groups have been in contact with HISD officials concerning the children, Reed said. The district, however, has been given no confirmation that students will, in fact, be housed in Houston.

Federal officials have been scrambling for months to find housing for the record-breaking influx of children caught entering the U.S. illegally and alone.

Border Patrol agents made more than 52,000 apprehensions of unaccompanied children since Oct. 1, up from about 26,000 last fiscal year.

By law, the Border Patrol is supposed to transfer unaccompanied children to the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours. But the influx has overwhelmed the federal government's detention network, causing a processing logjam and bed shortage that has left unaccompanied children sleeping on concrete floors and benches in Border Patrol cells for days beyond the benchmark outlined in the law.

ORR, an agency under Health and Human Services, operates a sprawling network of more than 90 facilities -- most of them state-licensed shelters -- but has been unable to keep up with the growing numbers of children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

The agency has been forced to house an overflow of thousands of children at military bases in California, Texas and Oklahoma, and is searching for more bed space across the country.

The steep increase prompted President Barack Obama in June to declare an "urgent humanitarian situation" and tap the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate housing, medical care and transportation for the children.

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-te...en-5605697.php

Born	Annise Danette Parker May 17, 1956 (age 5 Houston, Texas, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse(s)	Kathy Hubbard (m. 2014)
Alma mater	Rice University
Religion	United Methodism
Website	Government website Personal website