(CNN)As the number of unaccompanied migrant children crossing the US-Mexico border continues to rise, hundreds have been kept in US Border Patrol facilities not meant for minors.
The Biden administration has not allowed journalists to independently visit the facilities, but several lawmakers have visited sites. Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar provided these photos revealing the conditions for dozens of children and adults in an overflow facility in Donna, Texas.
Photos released by Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar’s office show conditions inside a USCBP facility in Donna, Texas, over the weekend. CNN and Rep. Cuellar’s office have obscured portions of the image to protect the identities of minors.
As of Sunday, there were 822 children held in Border Patrol facilities, akin to jail-like conditions, for over 10 days, according to documents obtained by CNN. The number of kids held for a prolonged period of time has climbed almost daily as the administration races to find shelter to accommodate them and amid constraints related to the coronavirus pandemic.
US Border Patrol overflow facility in Donna, Texas.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, when pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” Sunday, would not provide a timeline on when children at the border will be housed in more humane conditions, only saying it would be “as soon as possible.”
Mayorkas told Bash that the Biden administration is “working around the clock to move those children out of the Border Patrol facilities into the care and custody of the Department of Health and Human Services that shelters them.”
“I have said repeatedly from the very outset that a Border Patrol station is no place for a child,” the secretary said.
Source: Behind closed doors at a US Border Patrol facility in Texas
