Record Number Of Migrant Children Crossing Mexico Border Into US, Spending Weeks At Shelters

CBS Dallas/Fort Worth

August 26, 2021

Child welfare advocates say a record number of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone are spending weeks at shelters, despite an emergency declaration by the Biden administration five months ago.

More than 700 children spent three weeks or longer at the government’s unlicensed sites in mid-July, according to declarations filed with a federal court overseeing custody conditions for immigrant youth. Advocates say children should be released quickly to their relatives in the U.S. or sent to a licensed facility.

In one of the filings, a 16-year-old Salvadoran boy said children were served raw meat. It took more than a month for the boy, who said he speaks with both his parents each week, to be released to his father in Georgia.

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