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New detention facilities will be opened in New Mexico
WASHINGTON (AP) — New detention facilities will be opened to house immigrant families caught crossing the border illegally amid a surge from Central America, the Obama administration said Friday.
The first will be a 700-bed family detention facility at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center [soon to be known as the Federal Law Non-Enforcement Training Center] in Artesia, New Mexico, the Homeland Security Department said. The training center is home to the Border Patrol's training academy.
Officials had no specific date for the opening, saying it would be soon.
The administration was actively looking for additional space to house immigrant families, primarily mothers with young children, caught crossing the Mexican border illegally, Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. He did not say how many people the new family detention centers would house or where others would be located.
The government operates only one such facility, in Berks County, Pennsylvania, with space for fewer than 100 people.
Mayorkas said about 39,000 adults with children have been apprehended at the border since the start of the budget year in October. The administration has released an unspecified number of them into the U.S. in recent months with instructions to report later to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices. Mayorkas, the No. 2 official at the agency and former head of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, told reporters he didn't know how many people have been released or subsequently appeared as ordered.
Mayorkas said the administration will also send more immigration judges, ICE attorneys and other immigration officials to the region to help process immigrants caught crossing the border illegally and, when possible, quickly return them to their home countries.
Immigrants crossing the border illegally have overwhelmed U.S. immigration agencies. More than 174,000 people, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, have been arrested in Texas' Rio Grande Valley this year.
The spike in border crossers — southern Texas is now the busiest border crossing in the country — prompted the Homeland Security Department earlier this year to start sending families to other parts of Texas and Arizona for processing before releasing them at local bus stops. . .
Emphasis added.
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