PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona officials say the U.S. government has asked them to rush medical supplies to a makeshift holding center housing hundreds of migrant children who were sent to the state after crossing into the U.S. from Mexico alone.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security started flying immigrants to Arizona from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas last month after the number of immigrants, including more than 48,000 children traveling on their own, overwhelmed the Border Patrol there.
The immigrant children were flown from Texas, released in Arizona and told to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office near their destination within 15 days.
A Homeland Security Department official told The Associated Press that about 700 children were sleeping on plastic cots Friday at the warehouse in Nogales, but that the number of children there was expected to double to around 1,400. The warehouse has a capacity of about 1,500.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because there was no authorization to discuss the matter publicly, said the Nogales holding center opened for children because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had nowhere to turn.
"They became so overwhelmed and haven't kept up with planning," the official said.
At the holding center, vendors are being contracted to provide nutritional meals, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, will provide counseling services and recreational activities.
ICE has said the immigrants were mostly families from Central America fleeing extreme poverty and violence.
The Homeland Security official said that about 2,000 mattresses have been ordered, and portable toilets and showers have been brought in.
The station began housing children flown from South Texas last Saturday. There are flights scheduled through mid-June.
Federal authorities plan to use the Nogales facility as a way station, where the children will be vaccinated and checked medically. They will then be sent to facilities being set up in Ventura, California, San Antonio, Texas, and Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
But the Homeland Security official said: "As quickly as we move them out, we get more. We believe this is just a start."
The children being held in Nogales are 17 or younger. The official estimated three of every four were at least 16.
Customs and Border Protection in Arizona "is prepared to and expects to continue processing unaccompanied children from South Texas," said Victor L. Brabble, a spokesman for the agency.
Gov. Jan Brewer in recent days sent an angry letter to PresidentBarack Obama demanding that the federal program of dropping off of families at bus stations in Phoenix stop immediately, calling it dangerous and unconscionable.
The governor said she hadn't received a response to her letter by Friday from Federal Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson.
"Meanwhile, I reiterate my call on President Obama to secure our southern border and terminate this operation immediately," Brewer said in a statement.
The Arizona Daily Star reported Saturday that Jimena Díaz, consul general of Guatemala in Phoenix, visited the center Friday and said about 250 children are from Guatemala, with the rest coming from El Salvador and Honduras.
Diaz told the newspaper that the children are being kept in separate groups, divided by age and gender. Most are between 15 and 17, Diaz said, with a few much younger. Teenage mothers with their children are also being detained separately, he said.
Nogales Mayor Arturo Garino visited the facility Saturday, but he did not get inside the site where the children were being held. Garino said he did meet with Border Patrol officials. He was told some of the children are as young as 1 year old.
"I have all the faith in the world as mayor and as a citizen of Nogales that our Border Patrol is doing the best and the most kind and humane thing with the children," Garino said.
The town has begun collecting clothing donations for the kids, he said.
Immigration officials can immediately return Mexican immigrants to the border, but they are more challenged in dealing with Central American migrants who illegally cross into the U.S. In recent months, waves of migrants from nations south of Mexico have arrived in Texas.
The Homeland Security official said that legally, only their parents or guardians can take custody if the government makes the children eligible for release.
Officials in Central America and Mexico have noticed a recent increase in women and children crossing the border. Father Heyman Vazquez, the director of a migrant shelter in Huixtla in the southern Mexico state of Chiapas, said he and others advise children that it's too dangerous. Yet, Vazquez is seeing more and more youths heading north.
"I remember a little boy of 9 years old and I asked if he was going to go meet someone and he told me 'No, I'm just going hand myself over because I hear they help kids," Vazquez said.
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(Spagat reported from Tijuana, Mexico. Associated Press writer Alicia A. Caldwell in Washington and Maria Verza in Mexico City contributed to this report.)
*UPDATE
*UPDATE
Andrew Wilder, the governor's communications chief, said federal officials told Brewer's office they were moving 432 children into Arizona late Friday, with another 367 expected today and an identical number the following day. And that said Wilder, is apparently just the beginning.
"More unaccompanied minors will continue to Arizona," he said.
Wilder said they are being taken to a detention center in on West La Quinta Road in Nogales for at least preliminary processing. He said state officials were told they would stay there for about three days before being shipped out to detention facilities in San Antonio, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, or Ventura, California.
That center in Nogales was recently opened to handle the large influx after being closed for several years. It has no indoor plumbing.
In the interim, however, Wilder said the sudden influx has created a problem, to the point where federal officials asked the state Department of Health Services to ship federal relief pallets they store in Arizona to Nogales. Those pallets contain everything from hygiene supplies, pillows and blankets to bedpans and medical supplies.
And Laura Oxley, spokeswoman for the state Department of Health Services, said federal officials have also asked Arizona to have vaccines, paid for by the federal government, shipped to Nogales. Oxley said these are for the normal childhood diseases like measles and mumps, with the plan being to vaccinate the children before they are moved elsewhere.
Wilder said this appears to be more than a temporary situation. He said as children leave the Nogales facility they are expected to be replaced by new arrivals, with capacity there at 1,500 at any one time.
He also said the Federal Emergency Management Agency has dispatched Steve DiBlasio, the region's deputy regional director, to Nogales to oversee the situation.
Officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement referred all questions about what is happening to the children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a part of the federal Department of Health and Human Services. A call to that agency's spokesman was not immediately returned.
Wilder also said that it appears ICE will continue shipping busloads of immigrant families to Arizona, essentially releasing them on a promise that they will report to immigration authorities when they reach their final destination. "There are no plans to terminate it,'' he said.
That fact was confirmed by an ICE spokeswoman.
The root cause behind both situations appears to be a sudden influx of immigrants, not so much from Mexico but from deeper in Central America. That is being spurred in part by a coffee fungus that has left many who had been working on those plantations without a job.
There also are reports of increased violence in Honduras which has led to more immigrants from that country.
This shift in country of origin has put a crimp in ICE operations which normally involve simply shipping immigrants, most of whom have come from Mexico, back to the border to their own country.
In essence, the immigrants are being released on their own, with orders to report to an ICE office within 15 days of arriving at their final location.
But Wilder said the problem is the creation of the lack of border enforcement by the Obama administration. And he said it will only get worse as new immigrants figure out they are not immediately being shipped home.
"As word continues to grow throughout other countries that America's borders are open, if you get to our border you will be welcomed, we expect the influx that is already a crisis level ... will continue,'' Wilder said. And he said the Obama administration has made no real effort to secure the border.
"If this administration would put half the effort into securing the border that it has put into this operation of transporting illegal aliens to Arizona, and other states possibly, then this crisis wouldn't exist.''
Brewer sent an angry letter to President Barack Obama on Monday demanding that the program of dropping off families at bus stations in Phoenix and Tucson stop immediately. She called the program dangerous and unconscionable, asked for details and demanded to know why state authorities weren't consulted or even informed.
Brewer's staff spent Friday in a series of calls with officials from the FEMA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security officials.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/supplies-running-short-migrant-kids-arizona-article-1.1821211#ixzz344WYN5wJ
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/supplies-running-short-migrant-kids-arizona-article-1.1821211#ixzz344WYN5wJ
