The Biden administration is re-opening a Trump-era border facility for migrant kids to help deal with the massive influx of unaccompanied alien children crossing the Southwest U.S. border, a problem that’s only ramped up since President Joe Biden’s election as more illegal aliens seek to take advantage of the new administration’s lax border policies.
And advocates of illegal immigration aren’t too happy about the new cage- er, “facilities.”
The “tent city,” used for a few months under the Trump administration in 2019, will hold up to 700 migrant teens ages 13 to 17.
The move’s an interesting one for a president who promised to end the Trump administration’s “kids in cages” policy – also known as the common and lawful custom of detaining illegal aliens in enclosed facilities, a practice common under the Bush administration and continued throughout all eight years under President Barack Obama and then-Vice President Biden.
But as far as immigration advocates are concerned, Biden’s use of a Trump facility to detain kids is a violation of his campaign promise.
“It’s unnecessary, it’s costly, and it goes absolutely against everything [President] Biden promised he was going to do,” said Linda Brandmiller, an immigration lawyer in San Antonio, per the Washington Post. “It’s a step backward, is what it is. It’s a huge step backward.”
“If they were actually addressing the issues that are endemic in a system that has been established for many years and is flawed, if they were addressing the inadequacies instead of creating a parallel jail for kids, I would have more hope,” she said.
The camp includes lines of trailers to house the kids, as well as a massive dining tent and a medical tent.
First migrant facility for children opens under Biden https://t.co/ADgQxIlMYU
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 23, 2021
As for the cost, the Washington Post notes taxpayers are shucking out about $775 per day, per child for them to stay at the facility. If the facility is maxxed out to its 700-child capacity, that brings the total per-day cost of the facility to $542,500. Border officials say each child is conservatively expected to remain at the camp for 30 days to allow time for processing and quarantine, meaning the total per-child cost of a stay at the facility comes in at roughly $23,250.
As for why so many illegal aliens are coming across the border and necessitating these facilities in the first place, that’s a two-fold issue: firstly, Biden’s election following months of promises on the campaign trail to reverse Trump’s stringent border enforcement policies have spurred thousands of migrants to head to the United States expecting to be let in.
Additionally, Biden has already taken steps to reverse the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy that required asylum-seekers to stay south of the border until their cases have been heard by an immigration judge. Under Biden, immigration officials have already begun allowing thousands of migrants to enter the country to completely ignore await their court hearing on the U.S. side of the border, creating a massive influx of illegal aliens – including unaccompanied children – coming into the country to be processed before being released into the interior of the U.S., often to join family members who are already here.