With thousands of people entering the United States illegally, every town is a potential border town faced with absorbing large influxes of illegal immigrants who will need food, shelter, clothing, and money. Some are bused to large cities far from the border, some have been flown—often in the middle of the night—to a myriad of destinations.
Many are unaccompanied minors—age 17 and under—and although the government has 296 “Influx Care Facilities” located in 27 states to house such minors, it does not make clear precisely where the minors are sent.
When unaccompanied minors illegally cross into the United States and are apprehended by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), they are transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is legally required to provide care for all unaccompanied children referred to it while their claims to immigration are processed, or until they are placed with a sponsor, which may be a parent or relative.
To be considered an unaccompanied child, they must have no lawful immigration status in the United States, be under 18 years old, and have no parent or legal guardian in the United States available to provide care and physical custody.
As of May 5, there were 8,790 children in ORR care across the United States, but many more are expected with the ending of Title 42 on May 11.
“While ORR has worked to build up its licensed bed capacity, additional capacity is urgently needed to manage the increasing numbers of unaccompanied children referrals from DHS,” ORR said in a May 5 statement on its website.
“In preparation for the potential need for additional beds and to provide services and care that align with child welfare best practices, HHS opened several Influx Care Facilities (ICFs).
“ORR operates a network of 296 facilities/programs in 27 states and has a proven track record of accountability and transparency for program operations, as well as being a good neighbor in the communities where facilities are located,” the ORR said.
But when The Epoch Times asked for a list of those facilities and states, neither the ORR nor the Department of Health and Human Services provided it.
A future facility in Greensboro, North Carolina, is mentioned on the ORR website. The future Greensboro Piedmont Academy will provide shelter for boys and girls, 13 to 17 years old, and has a capacity of up to 800 beds. But no children are in care there yet, the statement said, and an opening date has not been determined. When open, the academy will provide education, housing, mental health, medical, and case management.
Specifically, ICFs for unaccompanied minors must provide clean and comfortable sleeping quarters, meals, toiletries, laundry, educational and recreational activities, and access to medical services. Minors are tested for COVID-19 before being transported to the facility and every three days while in care. They are given medical screenings and any follow-up care needed for any injuries or illnesses, according to ORR.
In March, news broke that Ehrenfeld Companies—the owner of the former two-year-college for Mercyhurst University, Granite Ridge, in the Borough of North East, Pennsylvania—was considering turning the property into housing for unaccompanied minors.
However, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and members of his office have been contacted by local leaders and residents expressing their objections to such a facility.
“There is a lot of concern from community members in North East about the prospect of an unaccompanied migrant facility in their town. We understand the talks between property owners and local officials remain ongoing and that it’s not a done-deal just yet,” Matt Knoedler, Kelly’s spokesman told The Epoch Times.
“So far, Representative Kelly and our staff remain in communication with all parties involved to remain up-to-date about the project’s future. We met with local officials and the property’s owners last week to learn more about the future of the project and what the impact of that project may be on the North East community.
“Many residents remain concerned about a repeat of what happened in Erie County in 2021. when a group of nearly 150 migrant children were suddenly placed in an emergency intake site without first telling community members or even Representative Kelly. It appears the 2021 case is fresh in the minds of North East residents as the debate over this new proposed facility continues.”
Granite Ridge did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.
On April 5, 2021, HHS opened an Emergency Intake Site for Unaccompanied Children at the Target Lodge Pecos North property in Pecos, Texas. As of June 4, 2022, the site transitioned to an Influx Care Facility which provided shelter for boys and girls, 13 to 17 years old.
Then, on March 11, 2023, the facility was placed in warm status, which means the facility is not fully staffed with only minimal onsite facility management services, such as payment of utilities, infrastructure repairs, and fence, landscaping, and storm damage preparation.
Currently, there are no children in care at the site and no reactivation date, according to ORR.
Between 2012 and 2022, unaccompanied minors entering the United States each year were mostly teenage boys from Guatemala, ORR statistics show. In 2022, the ORR received 128,904 minors from the Department of Homeland Security. Of those, 47 percent were from Guatemala, followed by 29 percent from Honduras, 13 percent from El Salvador, 3 percent from Mexico, and 8 percent from all other countries.
Last year 36 percent of captured unaccompanied minors were female and 64 percent were male; 15 percent were aged 12 or under, 13 percent were aged 13-14, 36 percent were aged 15-16, and 36 percent were 17 or older.
That is, 72 percent were aged 15 or older, and 28 percent were 14 or younger.
“I would not want one of these facilities in my neighborhood because regardless of whether the kids commit any crimes, it’s a magnet for criminals. They attract everything from gangs to human traffickers,” Matthew O’Brien, director of investigations at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, told The Epoch Times.
“These are being portrayed as something like a group home or a foster home. But they really need to be run more like a juvenile detention facility because the other problem is, most of these kids—by the time they’re put into this procedure—have not had background checks run on them. It’s a problem vetting minors in general, but particularly minor aliens. So we don’t know how many of these kids have had interactions with the criminal justice system in their home countries.”
O’Brien was appointed by former President Donald Trump, and worked as an immigration judge and ran the National Security Division of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Trump administration. He says a lot of unaccompanied minors are not minors at all; they fake their age to get into the program that often ends with a green card.
When he was a judge, O’Brien said he saw instances of people who were 27 years old posing as minors and being put in U.S. high schools.
“Gang membership in Latin America regularly starts with kids as young as eight to 10 years old. The program has been infected with gang members,” O’Brien said. “Gangs aren’t stupid. They know that this is also fertile ground for recruitment. Trafficking is another problem.
“A trafficker shows up and says, ‘This is my cousin’s kid. I’m a family member.’ And of course, the child knows that they need to say yes to that because if the child doesn’t, the child will be severely punished,” O’Brien said, adding that once the minor leaves the facility, HHS has no idea what happens to them.
“HHS doesn’t have any staff to monitor the so-called sponsors. There’s nobody doing random home visits. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is not having their fraud detection and National Security Division look into any of this. So the whole thing is a disaster.”
In this way, O’Brien says, the United States has become the largest human trafficker of children in the world.
In April, Robin Dunn Marcos, ORR director was questioned in Congress about why 85,000 unaccompanied minors from the border have been reported missing in the past two years. She was unable to answer.
“People send their children here in hopes that they are somehow going to serve as an anchor for adult family members to later come here,” O’Brien said.
“People have been misled by leftists, to believe that the ideal life for their children is living in a place where everything is given to them for free. There is a perception that, in the United States, if you show up and stay here long enough, you will be able to—either from state governments or from the federal government—get free health care, free education, free housing, food stamps, etc.” O’Brien said.
“Honduras clearly has some problems with gangs. But the homicide rate in Honduras is significantly lower than it is in Baltimore. [Parents of unaccompanied minors] are certainly being irresponsible when they put their children into that dangerous stream of people heading toward the United States without adult supervision.”
Spending on illegal immigration by unaccompanied children has increased greatly in recent years, federal records show, costing taxpayers:
While ORR and HHS have not provided a list of ICFs across the United States, some can be found through government documents. Some of them, in this incomplete list, include: