300 immigrant children, all unaccompanied, were transported from southern Texas to a makeshift way station erected in a Border Patrol facility in Nogales in Arizona on Saturday. More children are on the way, even as government agencies try to take steps to improve the living conditions there.
Over 1,000 immigrant children are expected to fill the center as the US government tries to cope with the increase in the number of unaccompanied children illegally crossing the border in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. The Honduras consul to the US in Arizona, Tony Banegas, paid a visit to the detention center to find out how many children have come from Honduras; he established that 764 minors were at the site on Saturday night, with 236 from Honduras.
Banegas says that the children at the center are sleeping inside plastic containers, have not been able to have a shower for up to ten days, and include a one-year-old baby with diarrhea and a pregnant young woman. “It’s supposed to be temporary but [officials] can’t define that,” Banegas said in response to a question about how long the young immigrants would have to stay there.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is unable to say when the transfer of youngsters will come to an end. “What drives that is how many people are coming into Texas, and how many people are processed in general,” said CBP spokesman Victor Brabble.