Nogales facility emptying out of illegal alien children
Nogales facility emptying out of immigrant children
Mariana Dale, The Republic | azcentral.com2:01 p.m. MST July 18, 2014
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STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Nogales became the focal point of a national debate over migrant children caught crossing alone into the U.S. when more than a 1,000 kids were shipped there the weekend of June 6 because of overcrowding in Texas.
- More than 57,000 unaccompanied immigrant children have been apprehended at the border since October last year.
All the unaccompanied immigrant children held in Nogales, Ariz., will soon be on their way to Health and Human Services shelters, according to a spokesperson from the agency.
"As of yesterday, the Unaccompanied Alien Children's program has designated all minors for placement at UAC program shelters, clearing the backlog at Border Patrol stations across the country as well as the FEMA/DHS Nogales Processing Center in Arizona," Kenneth J. Wolfe, a Health and Human Services official, wrote in an e-mail to Channel 12 News.
SPECIAL REPORT: Border crisis: Migrant children
Nogales became the focal point of a national debate over migrant children caught crossing alone into the U.S. when more than 1,000 kids were shipped there the weekend of June 6 because of overcrowding in Texas.
More than 57,000 unaccompanied immigrant children have been apprehended at the border since October. In the same time period in the year before, 27,884 children were apprehended.
The majority are from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and most cross in Texas's Rio Grande Valley. The influx overwhelmed processing facilities in Texas.
On Thursday, Chief Patrol Agent of the Rio Grande Valley, Kevin Oaks, announced fewer kids are being apprehended at the border and kids will no longer be transferred to a facility in Nogales.
"As I understand it, Nogales is going to probably wind down here within the next day to week," Oaks said in an audio recording of the press conference provided to The Arizona Republic.
A new processing facility in McAllen, Texas, that could hold as many as 1,000 immigrant children was scheduled to open today.
http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/...dren/12849603/
