USA: More than 14,000 immigrant minors, in custody 1:53
(CNN) -
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday did not provide a timeline indicating when the Biden administration will open new facilities capable of handling the surge in unaccompanied minors on the southern border.
“We established three new facilities last week… we are working on the system from start to finish.
We do it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, "Mayorkas told CNN's Dana Bash on" State of the Union, "after being asked about a government timetable for getting new facilities up and running. .
"We have dealt with surges in the past and the men and women of the Department of Homeland Security will succeed."
LOOK: They find in Mexico more than 300 migrants crammed into trucks;
114 were unaccompanied minors
The comments by Mayorkas, who insisted that the southern border is currently closed to migrants, come as the situation there worsens amid the increase in unaccompanied minors in US custody.
The Biden administration has been reluctant to call the situation a crisis, even as Democratic and Republican lawmakers do so while pressuring officials to take action in the face of this growing situation.
Bash pressed Mayorkas to provide more details on a schedule, and asked, "Can you be more specific?"
and "Can you give me a date when you hope to have these best facilities for these minors up and running?"
The secretary, again declining to provide a date, told Bash "as soon as possible," adding that the coronavirus pandemic has partly complicated his efforts.
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Why unaccompanied migrant children arrive in the US. 2:25
Mayorkas defended the government's work on the southern border and blamed the Trump administration for dismantling the immigration system, saying his department now has to rebuild it "from scratch."
As of Saturday, there were more than 5,000 unaccompanied minors in Border Patrol (CBP) custody, according to documents obtained by CNN, up from 4,500 minors just days earlier.
Mayorkas told Bash on Sunday that the government expels families and single adults, but that they are "focused on ... the needs of minors."
“I have said repeatedly that a Border Patrol station is not a place for a minor and that is why we work day and night to remove these children from the Border Patrol facilities, and place them in the care and custody of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), ”he said.
As of Saturday, more than 600 minors had been in custody for more than 10 days, documents show.
Federal law requires unaccompanied minors to be released within 72 hours to HHS, which oversees a network of shelters designed to house minors, but amid limitations related to the pandemic, minors remain in custody for more than 72 hours.
On average, these migrants remain in Border Patrol custody in jail-like facilities for an average of more than five days.
MORE: CNN follows underage immigrants as they journey across the border
CNN previously reported that minors alternate schedules to make space for each other in confined facilities, some have not seen sunlight in days and others take turns showering, often going days without bathing, according to case managers, attorneys and agents. of the Border Patrol.
Bunk beds have been brought into one of the migrant processing facilities to help accommodate the influx of minors, and one officer said they also sleep on cots and plastic floor mats and benches.
The government did not anticipate this problem of the increase, officials told CNN, accepting that they expected the number of migrants arriving at the U.S. border to increase once they took office, given their drastically different approach to immigration compared to. with that of former President Donald Trump, but they did not anticipate such a large increase.
Mayorkas warned that the increase will likely reach a two-decade peak.
CNN's Priscilla Alvarez, Jason Hoffman, and Nikki Carvajal contributed to this report.
