The Trump administration is expanding its shelter capacity to handle a record number of immigrant teenagers who crossed the border seeking work and asylum. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is now overseeing the care of 12,800 immigrant children under the age of 18.
Just this week, a federally contracted tent camp on the U.S.-Mexico border in the barren desert near Tornillo, Texas, announced it is expanding from 1,200 to 3,800 beds. This is one in a network of 100 youth shelters across the country.
Shelters for minors are, by far, the most expensive type of immigration custody provided by the U.S. government. Detaining a mother and child runs in the range of $320 a day in what Homeland Security calls a “family residential center”; beds for unaccompanied children exceed $600 a day, when security, education, counseling, medical care and recreation are factored in.
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