Migrant Children Spend Weeks At U.S. Shelters As More Arrive

Some immigrant teens say they've waited weeks or months in massive facilities and don't know when they'll be released to relatives in the United States.

Five months after the Biden administration declared an emergency and raced to set up shelters to house a record number of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border alone, kids continue to languish at the sites, while more keep coming, child welfare advocates say. 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.