Feds don't have enough beds for migrant families

Feds don’t have enough beds for migrant families

By TED HESSON and WESLEY MORGAN

06/21/2018 06:04 PM EDT

Updated 06/21/2018 07:08 PM EDT


The Trump administration has pledged to warehouse migrant families together. But at the moment, it has no place to put them.

An executive order signed by President Donald Trump on Wednesday calls for the Homeland Security Department to keep migrant children in custody with their parents during criminal proceedings for illegal entry and subsequent immigration proceedings. But the cases of asylum-seekers caught at the border can take months or years to resolve — and the federal government has only 3,326 beds for detained families in three facilities, according to a 2017 watchdog report.

The Border Patrol arrested 9,485 family members in May alone.

The hurdles are "pretty significant,” said John Sandweg, former acting ICE director under President Barack Obama. “They’re going to have to build some family detention centers quickly.”

Trump’s executive order calls on the Defense Department to “take all legally available measures” to provide detention space for the families. But Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jamie Davis said Thursday that no formal request had been made.

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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/21/feds-dont-have-enough-beds-for-migrant-families-643027