U.S. to Close 3 Emergency Shelters Used for Migrant Children

New York Times

By Michael D. Shear

August 4, 2014

U.S. to Close 3 Emergency Shelters Used for Migrant Children 

WASHINGTON — The federal government is shutting down three temporary shelters that had been opened to house a surge of unaccompanied children from Central America entering the United States across the southern border, officials said Monday afternoon.

The shelters at military bases in Texas, Oklahoma and California had provided housing for more than 7,700 children since they were opened in May and June. Tens of thousands of children have crossed the border with Mexico in recent months, sparking a political debate about what to do with the migrant children and how quickly to send them back to their homes in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

But officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, which shelters migrant children while their cases are pending, said the emergency shelters at the military bases were no longer needed.

“We are able to take this step because we have proactively expanded capacity to care for children in standard shelters, which are significantly less costly facilities,” department officials said in a statement. “At the same time, we have seen a decrease in the number of children crossing the southwest border.”

Administration officials have said in the last two weeks that the flow of migrant children across the southern border has begun to slow, though they have cautioned that they do not know if the pace might increase again in the coming months.

For now, officials said they no longer need the extra space at the military bases. The shelter at Fort Sill Army Base in Oklahoma will no longer be used after Aug. 8, officials said, while the shelters at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas and Naval Base Ventura County-Port Hueneme in California will be phased out over the next several weeks.

Health Department officials said the three shelters could be reopened if there is a new surge of migrant children across the border.

The arrival of the children prompted President Obama to ask Congress for nearly $4 billion to care for the children while they are here and to process their refugee claims more quickly.

That request became bogged down in politics on Capitol Hill, where Republicans and Democrats quibbled over the amount needed to address the border crisis and about whether to change a 2008 law that provides greater protections to migrant children from countries other than Mexico.

Lawmakers left late last week for a five-week summer vacation without approving any extra money to address the situation at the border.

But Health Department officials said the decision to close the shelters at the military bases is not the result of a lack of resources because the president’s legislative request failed. Kenneth J. Wolfe, a spokesman for the department, said the agency would have closed the shelters at the military base even if Mr. Obama’s request had been accepted.

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