Texas family detention centers to be converted into rapid-processing hubs

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is reportedly drafting plans to convert family migrant detention centers in South Texas into screening hubs as the Biden administration faces a growing number of migrants at the southern border. 

The Washington Post obtained internal DHS draft documents outlining the plans. It reported on Thursday that senior ICE official Russell Hott informed staff in an email this week that the number of unaccompanied minors and families arriving in the U.S. in 2021 is “expected to be the highest” recorded “in over 20 years.” 

Hott warned in his email that if the U.S. border officials continue to take in more than 500 family members per day, the change in use to the family detention centers “may not be sufficient to keep pace with apprehensions.”

Individuals who cannot be sheltered in one of the rapid-processing centers may have to be placed in hotels, Hott wrote. MVM, an ICE contractor, will help the families to be transported to hotels if there is no longer capacity at the rapid-processing centers, the company plans to use hotels in McAllen, Tex., El Paso, and Phoenix, he added.

Transforming family detention amounts to a wholesale rejection not only of Donald Trump administration policies but also those of former president Barack Obama. It will also present a significantly different vision of how to handle the fast-changing character of mass migration at the southern border.

For decades, single adults — particularly men — dominated the flows northward into the United States, but in recent years the number of families and minors traveling without their parents increased substantially.