Exclusives

EXCLUSIVE: Biden Admin Put Migrant Kids’ Shelter On The Clock In Scramble For Space Amid Border Crisis, Emails Show

The White House/Wikimedia Commons

The Biden administration rushed to find room for more migrant children as the 2021 border surge overwhelmed its shelters, newly obtained emails show.

An Administration for Children and Families (ACF) official asked contractor Cherokee Federal on Aug. 5, 2021, to explain how it could expand capacity and COVID-19 quarantine space for unaccompanied migrant children at its Pomona, California, facility, according to records obtained by the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) and shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General found in June 2022 that most of the emergency sites it inspected, which included Pomona, did not follow federal COVID testing guidance, partly because the government was expanding capacity so quickly.

‘The Urgency Of This Request’

The Biden-era official’s request, marked “Importance: High,” asked how quickly Cherokee Federal could add bunk beds and other structures, and how much COVID quarantine space the site had left, according to the email exchange in the CASA-obtained records.

“[W]hen do you estimate you’ll run out of COVID space?” an ACF official asked in the initial Aug. 5 email, according to the exchange depicted in the records. ACF is a division of HHS.

The Aug. 5 email included a response deadline of “Friday, July 5 2021,” a month before the email was sent.

The date was “likely a typographical error — adding to the chaos and confusion of this exchange,” CASA Director James Fitzpatrick told the DCNF.

“When read in the broader context of the conversation with the follow up extensions requested by Cherokee Federal, and the fact that July was in the past — all of the context leads to this being a request for an immediate next day reply,” Fitzpatrick added.

Cherokee Federal responded on Aug. 5 that it was still confirming pricing for beds, structures, and “the needs to increase the COVID numbers” and asked for “an extension until 6:00 pm PST Monday August 9, 2021,” the email exchange states.

Cherokee Federal did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

On Aug. 6, the ACF official wrote that the agency could not reach the company’s contracts manager by phone and said “the ACF Secretary is requesting a meeting today to discuss the increased capacity needs at the Pomona site” and set an “urgent meeting at 3pm Eastern Time today.”

Cherokee Federal confirmed it was “good for a call at 3:00 pm EST today,” according to the exchange. On Aug. 9, the company asked for an extension to Aug. 11, writing that it was “still waiting on a few responses.”

However, the Biden administration rejected the extension.

“Due to the tight deadline and the urgency of this request, we are not able to grant an extension until Wednesday, August 11th,” the ACF official wrote in response on Aug. 9. “However, we are able to grant the extension until close of until [sic] 3pm Eastern Time.”

The official confirmed that 3 p.m. extension in a same-day follow-up email.

Cherokee Federal sent its cost estimate Aug. 10, according to the email exchange. ACF then asked for further clarification “by 12pm on August 13, 2021 Eastern Time,” and the company replied Aug. 13 that “unfortunately we will be late in our response.”

ACF’s initial email described the request as being “for planning purposes related to a potential increase in capacity and [Cherokee Nation Management & Consulting’s] COVID processes.”

“The Biden HHS was woefully unprepared for the unaccompanied migrant children crisis that they created,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement to the DCNF. “They were desperately reaching out to contractors in August 2021 for help to house the influx of children and expected answers back almost immediately.”

“This type of behavior and pressure on contractors may have contributed to the unprecedented number of missing unaccompanied minors that occurred during the Biden years,” Fitzpatrick added.

‘Rapidly Released To Poorly Vetted Sponsors’

ACF, now under the Trump administration, criticized how its predecessor handled children in the agency’s care.

“At the height of the Biden administration border crisis, 22,000 [unaccompanied alien children] were in [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] care,” ACF’s Office of Communications said in a statement to the DCNF. “These children were then rapidly released to poorly vetted sponsors.”

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) — an office within HHS — currently cares for about 1,725 children, the ACF told the DCNF. In the last year and a half, the office has located 157,000 children the Biden administration released to sponsors, and some were “found and rescued from trafficking situations and abuse.”

“ORR continues to search for thousands of missing minors to confirm their safety,” the agency told the DCNF.

The inspector general’s office visited 11 sites, including Pomona, and found that eight did not trace the contacts of children or staff who tested positive for COVID, according to the June 2022 audit. The Office of Refugee Resettlement had handled surges before and “should have been better prepared.”

“ORR contracted with several organizations that had little or no experience providing shelter and services to children, and the contracts did not contain adequate details about COVID-19 protocols,” the inspector general’s audit stated.

Cherokee Federal was running the site with a $706.9 million government contract in April 2021, federal spending records show.

“We are proud of our work in Pomona, where we followed regulations and flagged every potential safety issue to the government so it could be reviewed and quickly addressed,” Cherokee Federal CEO Steven Bilby said in an Aug. 13, 2024, statement, the Cherokee Phoenix reported.

The Pomona site held up to 2,500 children at a time and took in about 10,000 before it closed in Nov. 2021, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reported.