Surprising Takeaways in AP Article on Child Migrant Detention
Taxpayer-funded airline tickets for children flying alone, dangerous detention allegations, voluntary family separation, and truncated vetting times
By Andrew R. Arthur on May 14, 2021
In a May 12 post, I referenced an AP article on complaints about detention facilities run by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for unaccompanied alien children (UACs) apprehended by CBP at the Southwest border. That May 11 AP article jumps around a lot (and fails to address some key questions), but there are also some surprising takeaways therein.
First, as I noted in that earlier post, there were a lot of unaccompanied children (16,933) who were taken into Border Patrol custody in April — the second-highest monthly total for any month in which Border Patrol keeps records (back to October 2009). In first place was March (18,733), so the Biden administration should not be taking any victory laps over the decline.
In fact, between February and April, Border Patrol has apprehended almost 45,000 UACs and, by law, CBP is supposed to turn those children over in 72 hours to HHS for placement in shelters that the department runs or has contracts for.
https://cis.org/Arthur/Surprising-Takeaways-AP-Article-Child-Migrant-Detention
