The Biden administration is mobilizing the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is known for responding to natural disasters and other crises, to support an effort over the next 90 days to process the growing number of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the U.S. southern border.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Saturday evening that the federal government is working to move unaccompanied children from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to the Department of Health and Human Services and “place them with a family member or sponsor until their immigration is adjudicated.”
As NPR’s Franco Ordoñez and John Burnett reported Thursday, a record number of minors are being held in warehouse-like detention facilities run by Customs and Border Protection, as the number of children arriving at the border without their parents grows faster than the Biden administration is able to transfer them.
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