The White House has distanced itself from reports that migrant teenagers were held in buses outside a federal government facility in Dallas while they waited to be reunited with their families in the United States.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki condemned the anecdotes as “unacceptable” and “outrageous.”
“They do not meet our standard for childcare, that is true for the president, it is true for the Secretary of Homeland, Health and Human Services, it is true for everyone involved across government,” Psaki told reporters Friday.
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The matter is being investigated to determine “how we got to this point, how this possibly happened,” according to Psaki.
“There’s no excuse for this kind of treatment,” she said. “In terms of what the consequences will be, I just can’t predict that before an investigation has concluded.”
The Dallas Morning News reported this week that migrant teenagers, mostly boys, were being housed in charter buses parked outside the city’s convention center. The makeshift facility was set up early in President Joe Biden’s administration to deal with the uptick in migrant children crossing the southern border, holding up to 2,300 minors at the height of the influx. About 600 migrants are being housed in the center as of this week, with speculation the facility will be abandoned by the end of the month, the newspaper reported.
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Roughly 17,200 unaccompanied children were apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol in April, down from almost 19,000 in March. Minors are supposed to be transferred from the Department of Homeland Security to Department of Health and Human Services custody within 72 hours. HHS is then responsible for caring for the children while officials work to reunite them with vetted family members, legal guardians, or government sponsors.
