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The administration of US President Joe Biden is instructing long-term facilities that hold immigrant children to lift capacity restrictions enacted during the coronavirus pandemic to open up much-needed beds in a system facing sharply increasing needs. On Friday, a memo issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services ordered service providers to, “Temporarily enhance capacity to full licensed capacity, while implementing and adhering to strict COVID-19 mitigation measures”. It is still unclear how many beds will come available beyond the roughly 7,000 that were online last month. The fully licensed capacity from the DHHS was over 13,000 beds late last year. Some facilities have decreased their capacity by as much as half during the coronavirus pandemic.

However, hundreds of children waiting to be placed in DHHS’s system are being detained by the US Border Patrol in tent facilities or large, cold cells unequipped to hold minors. Point to be noted that lifting pandemic-related caps could increase the risk of spreading the coronavirus within the DHHS facilities, especially as more children enter the system. But the organizations running under DHHS facilities and some advocates have pushed for more beds to be made available if done safely, instead of the alternative of keeping kids in Border Patrol facilities longer or placing them in costly, unlicensed emergency centers. The memo was first reported by CNN, which says, “Given the nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no 0% risk scenario, particularly in congregate settings”.

The memo added, “Therefore, ORR facilities should plan for and expect to have COVID-19 cases”. The DHHS has previously authorized facility operators to bill the government for travel expenses when a child is released to a parent or other sponsor. Some families cannot easily afford the hundreds of dollars to fly a child and a guardian, and disputes over payment can sometimes delay a child’s release for several days. Agents are apprehending around 400 children a day unaccompanied by a parent or guardian, a sharp increase since last month. There are concerns that those numbers will continue to rise. President Biden has now ended a practice under former President Donald Trump of expelling unaccompanied children under a public-health declaration enacted during the pandemic.