Representative Salud Carbajal made a visit to Carrizo Springs, Texas, on Wednesday, where a camp about 20 miles from the U.S./Mexico border holds 766 children between the ages of 13 and 17 who entered the United States without a parent. He told pool reporters accompanying the group of five members of Congress: "We don't need to have children in a facility like this. We need to expedite the process to make sure that those children are united with their guardians, their family members, and taken out of this facility as soon as possible.”
The Biden administration had been working "frantically" to provide more beds and bring staffing up to speed in the past two months, Carbajal said during a conference call on Thursday, but the children, mostly boys, were still there way too long. He had visited the camps set up in Tornillo, Texas, and Alamogordo, New Mexico, by the Trump administration, and unlike the tent cities at the other facilities, he said Carrizo Springs had buildings, dormitories with bunk beds, and bathrooms.
Carrizo Springs can hold more than 900 children, but it has kept numbers lower to avoid crowding because of the pandemic, which also requires screening the children when they arrive and quarantining any who test positive for COVID-19. More robust services, such as physicals, medical services, and educational assessments, were provided quickly, Carbajal noted, as well as thorough background checks on all staff members.