Onerous new procedures have created a bottleneck, keeping more than 15,000 unaccompanied minors in facilities that are at full capacity.
If it wasn’t bad enough that tens of thousands migrant children are being held in temporary detention, the system designed to move them into permanent homes is breaking down.
Children waiting for reunification with families or official sponsors are held in facilities like the youth detention center at Tornillo, Texas. As opposed to detention facilities run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Tornillo center is very much a youth-oriented facility run by a non-profit group contracted to do so by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).