Immigration

Biden Admin To Use Former North Carolina Boarding School Campus To House Migrant Children: REPORT

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The Biden administration is planning to use a former North Carolina boarding school campus to house hundreds of migrant children, according to CBS News.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement will open the doors of what used to be the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, North Carolina, to house up to 800 migrant children between the ages of 13 and 17 who crossed the southern border illegally, according to CBS News, citing a U.S. official familiar with the plan. The facility is intended to serve as “influx care” to provide emergency housing, which HHS uses when it expects a surge in child migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border.

HHS has roughly 5,800 in its custody, which is a major dip since numbers peaked to over 22,000 in the spring of 2021, according to federal data.

HHS has come under scrutiny over its care of migrant children after The New York Times reported in February that the U.S. government lost track of roughly 85,000 migrant children released from federal custody in the last two years. The Biden administration also faced backlash for a report that some of the children in its care were later found to be working in dangerous conditions in U.S. factories.

“This protracted and inappropriate reliance on unlicensed facilities undermines the commitment to placement in licensed facilities and moreover, undermines the best interests of children,” Neha Desai, a lawyer at the National Center for Youth Law, told CBS News.

Neither DHS nor HHS responded to requests for comment.