With 13,000 migrant children in custody, Biden grapples with first major test of his presidency

With few empty shelter beds, thousands of unaccompanied migrant children have been stranded in overcrowded U.S. Border Patrol holding facilities for days. Some of the children have reported showering just once in as many as seven days and taking turns to sleep on the floor. 

A camp for oil workers in Texas has been converted into an emergency housing facility for the soaring number of migrant minors crossing the southern border without their parents. A Dallas convention center is set to start sheltering teenage boys on Wednesday. Federal installations overseen by the military and NASA could also be turned into facilities to house migrant youth. On Tuesday, the U.S. government had more than 13,000 unaccompanied migrant children in its custody. More than 4,200 were stuck in Border Patrol facilities unfit to house them, including 3,000 who had been held beyond a 72-hour legal limit. Another 9,200 minors were being housed in shelters that are scrambling to reactivate beds taken offline during the pandemic.