The current US administration spends nearly $60 million a week to maintain custody under Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) supervision, where at least 16,000 migrant children are temporarily being held before being handed to a family member or sponsor in the US, The Washington Post reported on Thursday, citing obtained government data. According to the report, the cost of having migrant children in these shelters will rise significantly over the coming months.
As a result of the record-breaking numbers of migrant children that crossed the US border and caused capacity shortage in permanent shelters that had 7,700 beds, the Biden administration has quickly created ten "emergency facilities", creating 16,000 additional beds in convention centres and military bases.
To date, new shelters accommodate about 8,500 children, with 4,000 awaiting to be transferred from permanent facilities.
The cost to provide one child with food and other necessary items in permanent shelters reportedly stands at $290 each day. As spokesman the HHS’s Administration for Children and Families, Kenneth Wolfe, told The Washington Post, the cost of caring for a child in new emergency places is nearly 2.5 times higher “due to the need to develop facilities quickly and hire significant staff over a short period of time,” reaching “approximately $775 per day based on past experience.”
One month that minors spend in HHS temporary facilities costs the government about $24,000 per child, on average, excluding the time migrants spent in Border Patrol facilities where children are supposed to stay for 72 hours before being passed to the HHS. Sums are expected to grow as, according to the latest estimates, about 22,000 to 26,000 migrant children are expected to cross the border every month.
“HHS is committed to ensuring all unaccompanied children referred to our custody are cared for appropriately. To do so, we make every effort to ensure funds are used as effectively as possible to provide safe shelter and adequate services and that costs are contained to the degree possible,” Wolfe said.
The HHS’s Administration for Children and Families recently received $47.5 billion as part of the $1.9 trillion relief act, and the funding could be allocated to these needs. The larger expense item is related to staffing and insurance, according to The New Washington Post.
As the facilities suffer from a lack of civilian personnel, last month, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) informed various government agencies that it would accept "volunteer deployments" to help the overwhelmed sites.
The number of unaccompanied migrant children arriving in the US started to increase rapidly as the new administration came into the office. Biden, among other steps of his relaxed migrant policy, announced that the country would not extradite minors that crossed the border without adults. Last month, border authorities accepted almost 19,000 children into custody, in comparison with 5,858 in January.
The situation has attracted public attention, with a number of Republican senators taking a trip to the border where they reported uncomfortable and overcrowded conditions in facilities without proper COVID-19 testing. According to GOP Senator John Barrasso, the lawmakers were told to delete photos on their phones taken during their visit at the Texas facilities.
GOP Texas Governor Greg Abbott, during a press conference, claimed that at a San Antonio facility there had been reported cases of “sexual abuse, malnutrition, and a novel coronavirus outbreak.”