Tent cities for migrant children separated from their parents at the border? Sure, why not. According to USA Today, the Department of Health and Human Services will be paying a visit to Fort Bliss Army base, just outside of El Paso, Texas to see if it would be a suitable location to set up a tent city designed to house between 1,000 and 5,000 migrant kids. According to the report, HHS officials are also eyeing Air Force bases in San Angelo and Abilene for the task. So, tent cities built by the homeless are deemed illegal and get torn down by the government, but when the government wants to build one, it's totally cool. Got it. From USA Today: The Office of Refugee Resettlement at HHS is responsible for looking after more than 11,200 migrant children being held without a parent or guardian. Some 100 existing shelters, however, are now 95% full. The number of migrant children held in U.S. government custody without their parents has increased more than 20% as a result of a new "zero-tolerance" policy by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. That policy directs the Border Patrol to refer all people caught crossing the border illegally for criminal prosecution, regardless of their situation. Because of the Trump Administration's no-exceptions policy on illegal immigration, enough children to entertain the notion of opening a tent city to contain them all have been ripped from their families over the past few months, while adults, whose only crime was to come to America looking for a better life, you know, like many of our ancestors did, are being locked away in federal prisons while awaiting deportation hearings. You should know that none of this – the camps for kids, the threat of having families torn apart or being forced into prison – looks to be slowing the tide of illegal immigration. In May, Border Patrol agents rounded up over 40,000 individuals trying to cross America's southern border. That's the largest number seen since Trump took office. Image: By U.S. Navy photo by Yeoman 3rd Class Jessica L. Bidwell – This Image was released by the United States Navy with the ID 070206-N-3589B-007<doc-sep>The Trump administration is set to construct a "tent city" shelter in Tornillo, Texas, to house migrant children. The move comes after an uptick in the amount of migrant children in government custody, stemming from the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy toward people caught illegally crossing the border. The Tornillo site was also used to house migrant children and families in tents in 2016. The Trump administration has reportedly selected a site in the Texas desert to establish a "tent city" shelter that will house hundreds of migrant children at a time, in an effort to accommodate the influx of children in government custody, who in some cases have been separated from their parents. The site is the Tornillo Land Port of Entry, near El Paso, Texas, NBC News reported on Thursday. The site was similarly used in 2016 as a temporary facility to house migrant families and children in canvas tents. The Trump administration has for months sought solutions for accommodating the rising number of unaccompanied children and migrant families apprehended at the border in recent months. The Department of Health and Human Services has reported that its shelters for migrant children are currently at 95% capacity.. The news comes in the wake of the Trump administration's new "zero-tolerance" policy to criminally prosecute all migrants who cross the US-Mexico border illegally and separate them from their children. The policy and the uptick in border arrests has resulted in a surge in the amount of migrant children in custody — HHS told The Washington Post on Thursday it was holding 11,432 migrant children in custody, up from the 8,886 it was holding in April. It's unclear how many of those children were separated from their parents and how many arrived at the border already unaccompanied, but a Customs and Border Protection official recently told lawmakers that 658 children had been separated from 638 adults within one two-week period in May. The policy has stoked considerable backlash in recent weeks, as stories of traumatized children and devastated parents have been elevated in the national media. But the Trump administration has largely dismissed the complaints.<doc-sep>
The Trump administration will use a city in Texas to house immigrant children, including those who have been separated from their parents as part of a "zero tolerance" policy at the border, according to NBC News. The report says the administration will put up tents in Tornillo, Texas. The "tent city," as its being called, will be built by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and will hold about 450 beds for children. The report comes two days after it was reported that the administration was considering erecting tent cities at a military base in Texas to house unaccompanied migrant children currently held in detention. ADVERTISEMENT The number of migrant children being held by the government without their parents has surged by 20 percent since the administration began to enforce a policy that calls for separating migrant parents and children who are apprehended by authorities, according to McClatchy. The policy was announced in early May, and as a result DHS separates any child crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry with adults before prosecution. This will not be the first time the U.S. government has built a tent city. NBC notes that U.S. Customs and Border Protection utilized tents to house immigrants in 2014 under President Obama. Nearly 1,800 families were separated at the U.S.–Mexico border between October 2016 and February of this year, according to Reuters. NBC News has reported that over 570 unaccompanied children were in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol as of last week.