Every week, hundreds of migrants make the dangerous journey from Latin America to the U.S. border. The journey is even more concerning for a group of children.

“The stories are all the same, their parents send them north because they want them to survive," said Margo Cowan with Keep Tucson Together. "Whether it’s starvation or the horrific violence in their countries of origin.”

Cowan frequently works with unaccompanied minors to prevent deportation.

“There are legal mechanisms that allow people to present themselves at the border and apply for asylum, and it shouldn’t be a hostile environment,” Cowan said.

Latin American families are making use of this legal process. Last week, the Tucson Sector of Border Patrol processed around 107 unaccompanied migrant children.

“Smuggling organizations will bring these people and children, sometimes toddlers to these places in the middle of the desert, in the middle of nowhere,” said Jesus Vasavilbaso, a U.S. Border Patrol Agent.

An agent at the Tucson sector says they don't usually deal with children migrants. Around 85% of migrants encountered at the tucson sector are adults that have to be tracked down and apprehended. Recent groups of children came from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, led by smugglers to turn themselves in to Border Patrol.

“The smuggling organizations sell this to the migrants saying that when you show up to the border, you just turn yourself in to Border Patrol, and they just let you in,” Vasavilbaso said.

But that’s not always how it works. The Tucson sector did a medical exam on each child then sent them to either health and human services or the office of refugee resettlement. Now those children have been sent to family members, child protective services, or back home.

This story was originally published by KGUN in Tucson, Arizona.

HOUSTON (AP) — A federal judge has extended the deadline for the release of migrant children from detention, as advocates for detained families feared the government would create what they called a new form of family separation.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles on Thursday granted a request for a 10-day extension to release children held in family detention centers longer than 20 days.

In her ruling last month setting the Friday deadline, Gee said the family detention centers "are 'on fire' and there is no more time for half measures."

According to NBC News, Gee stated back in June that COVID-19 had made detention centers unsafe.

Gee's recent ruling did not extend to parents detained with their children, the Associated Press reported.

President Joe Biden campaigned on the promise of offering a more compassionate America for immigrants. But just months into his presidency, his administration faces a situation at the southern border that’s forcing more and more unaccompanied children into what some describe as jail-like conditions.

During a briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to call the situation a crisis. CNN reports that more than 100,000 migrants have been encountered at the border in the last four weeks alone — the highest that figure has been in the past five years.

The New York Times and CBS News report that about 3,200 migrant children are currently being held in U.S. custody after crossing the border unaccompanied. More than half of those children have been held longer than three days — the maximum amount of time allowed under the law.

So, how did the Biden administration find itself in such a situation, and does it have a plan moving forward?

Why are more immigrants coming to the U.S.?

It’s impossible to determine every migrant’s reason for choosing to make the dangerous trek to the U.S., but immigration from Central American countries like Nicaragua and Honduras has been on the rise in recent years as many from the region flee poverty and gang violence. Those immigrants travel through the entirety of Mexico and attempt to enter the U.S. at the southern border, many of them claiming asylum.

It’s also possible that many migrants are choosing now to enter America because Biden campaigned on being more compassionate to undocumented immigrants.

Biden's predecessor, former President Donald Trump, sought to deter immigration by separating families at the border, limiting asylum claims, making asylum seekers wait for their hearings in Mexico or another country, and giving Immigration and Customs Enforcement more leeway to deport immigrants already in the country.

With promises to undo some of those policies, immigration to the U.S. may seem more attractive to those seeking to flee their countries.

Last week, Sec. of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas asked migrants to hold off on journeying to the U.S., saying that it would “take time” for the Biden administration to build out its new immigration policies. But Mayorkas’ pleas have done little to slow immigration.

Why is the Biden administration keeping children in custody?

Unlike the Trump administration, Biden is not separating children from their families. However, when unaccompanied minors are encountered at the border, the administration has adopted a policy of keeping them in custody rather than letting them roam Mexico or other Central American countries alone.

When Customs and Border Protection encounters an unaccompanied minor, they bring them back to a Border Patrol station for processing, where they can be held for up to three days. After that, the migrant children are supposed to be transferred to a facility run by the Department of Health and Human Services, which is said to be a more humane environment. From there, the children are then matched with vetted sponsor families in the U.S.

However, under COVID-19 pandemic guidelines, the Health and Human Services resettlement camps are operating under capacity restrictions, cutting the number of beds available to migrants.

The lack of room in the HHS resettlement camps means Customs and Border Protection have been forced to hold children in their Border stations.

Does the Biden administration have a plan?

In the short term, HHS has said it will allow its resettlement facilities to return to pre-pandemic capacity levels, so long as they implement mitigation measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. CBP has also constructed tent complexes in the hopes of moving more children out of the Border stations. The tents offer more accommodations but aren’t suitable long-term solutions.

In addition, Psaki said Tuesday that the administration is “working to implement changes” that would allow the U.S. to safely house more children at the border.

In the long term, the Biden administration has proposed an immigration reform bill that would study the root causes of migration and could potentially offer foreign aid to Central American countries in hopes of stemming it in the future.

Video above: Migrant parents grapple with sending kids alone to U.S.

Migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border alone are still spending prolonged time in temporary government facilities, raising concerns among attorneys, who say the conditions are inadequate for kids, according to a court filing Monday.

Over the spring, the Biden administration scrambled to get a record number of migrant children out of Border Patrol holding facilities, which are more like jails, and into temporary sites, which attorneys conceded are better equipped for kids but still have shortfalls. In more than a dozen declarations filed Monday, children reported varying conditions across the sites, from receiving undercooked food to limited access to showers.

A team of attorneys was given access to speak with the children because they're monitoring government compliance with the Flores settlement, a 1997 agreement that governs conditions under which U.S. officials can detain immigrant children. They have conducted site visits and interviewed children at the majority of the pop-up sites, which were initially intended for short stays.

"Plaintiffs are increasingly concerned about the prolonged detention of thousands of children in unlicensed, standardless [emergency intake site] facilities, which are, at best, suitable for short-term emergency care and are inherently incapable of caring for children as the Settlement requires," the filing reads.

As of Sunday, there were 14,467 children in the custody of the Health and Human Services Department, many of whom were staying at emergency intake sites. Hundreds of children have spent 60 days or longer in emergency intake sites, Monday's filing says. The delays sparked confusion among children, who reported feeling desperate to reunite with family in the U.S.

"Every day, I feel really sad. I keep seeing other kids leave," a 16-year-old from Guatemala said in a declaration filed Monday. The teen has been at an emergency intake site in Pecos, Texas, for 62 days, waiting to reunite with an uncle in Maryland.

"There are some other kids who have been here for about the same time as me, and there is just a lot of sadness among us," the declaration reads.

HHS, which is charged with the care of unaccompanied migrant children, has a licensed bed capacity of around 13,500 equipped with a myriad of services, such as education and recreation, but given capacity constraints related to the coronavirus pandemic, the department has had to rely on temporary sites.

Generally, the pop-up facilities took the shape of emergency shelters, offering basic necessities but falling short of providing other services, like education and case management, to the hundreds of children housed at the sites. Conditions at emergency intake sites can vary — and regularly change — but in some cases, the rapid pace at which sites were set up contributed to their shortcomings.

CNN previously reported on a facility in Texas that attorneys likened to "warehousing" children. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters in late May that the Fort Bliss site, like other emergency sites, allowed the administration to quickly move children out of Border Patrol facilities to a place that could better meet their needs, and he contradicted concerns about conditions in the facility.

But attorneys who visited Fort Bliss in early June found issues persist there. "For example, children at the Fort Bliss EIS sleep in rows of bunk cots in giant tents with hundreds of other children, enjoy no privacy, receive almost no structured education, have little to do during the day, and lack adequate mental health care to address children's severe anxiety and distress surrounding their prolonged detention," Monday's filing says.

Attorneys also found issues at other large sites, where hundreds of children live in close quarters.

A 17-year-old girl from Guatemala shared her experience sleeping in a tent with about 300 other girls at the Fort Bliss site. "We sleep on bunks. I used to be sleeping on the top but now I'm on the bottom because of my anxiety. I was afraid I was going to fall off. The bunks are pretty low. I can't sit up on my bunk without hitting my head," her declaration reads.

Children generally reported being permitted outdoor recreation for "as little as one hour daily," having little to no privacy, sleeping during the day to pass the time and limited calls with family, the filing says.

In Houston, a site set up by the National Association of Christian Churches, which had been helping to shelter children, was abruptly closed shortly before attorneys were set to visit it, according to Neha Desai, immigration director at the National Center for Youth Law. They've since located more than a dozen girls who were at the site.

The girls described fainting spells, inadequate food or a lack of food, not enough clean clothes, and restrictions that barred them from using the restroom after 10 p.m, according to declarations.

"The food was horrible. There was chicken that was boiled and when we opened the chicken it was raw inside," reads a declaration from a 17-year-old Honduran girl.

"During the day and night, we were told that we had to stay on our beds and could only get up to go to the bathroom and to shower. We had to eat on our beds because there was no other place to eat," reads a declaration from a 17-year-old girl from El Salvador.

She also describes wearing the same clothes for 15 days and staff members directing the girls "to wear the same underwear and just turn it inside out, because there wasn't any laundry to clean our clothes."

"HHS is committed to ensuring the well being of children in our care. We proactively closed the Erie and Houston facilities because they didn't meet our standard of care and we are working tirelessly with contractors to ensure those standards are met at sites operating today," an HHS spokesperson previously told CNN in a statement, referring to the emergency site set up in Houston and another in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Another of the main challenges across pop-up sites is the lack of case management, usually baked into the already-established Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters. Case managers work with children to relocate them with sponsors, like parents or other relatives, in the United States while they continue their immigration proceedings.

While the administration has tried to expedite releases in some cases, attorneys found case management services are still lacking, leading children to stay in facilities for longer periods. Children reported a series of issues, like delays and interruptions in case management, not being able to request a meeting with a case manager, and having case managers removed or replaced without notice or explanation, the filing says.

Carlos Holguín, one of the attorneys who visited the intake sites, said in a filing that "the stressor children most frequently reported at Fort Bliss was not knowing how long they would remain separated from loved ones."

"The children I spoke to appeared visibly distressed when recounting how they felt seeing more and more of the children with whom they had arrived at Fort Bliss released, leaving them to wonder whether they had simply fallen through the cracks and been forgotten," he said in a declaration.

CNN —

A 10-year-old boy found walking alone in tears near the U.S.-Mexico border had previously been expelled from the U.S. with his mother under a Trump-era pandemic health order that allows for the swift removal of migrants, according to a Customs and Border Protection official.

The child, identified as Wilton Gutiérrez of Nicaragua, had been traveling with his mother when they were apprehended in the El Paso, Texas, region on March 8, the official told CNN. They were expelled from El Paso to Mexico under the health order known as "Title 42," the official added.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to media.

The Washington Post first reported that the child and his mother had been expelled to Mexico.

On April 1, Wilton was found by U.S. Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas without his mother after a farmer spotted him and alerted authorities. "Can you help me?" the boy asked a Border Patrol agent in a video shared with CNN to underscore concerns over the danger associated with the increase in unaccompanied children at the border.

Monday marked the first time a U.S. official has acknowledged the expulsion to CNN and provided the date that Wilton and his mother had first been apprehended on the border. In Miami, the boy's uncle Misael Obregón said in an interview with Univision last week that the minor and his mother had come to the U.S. to request asylum but US authorities did not allow her to stay in the country.

The Biden administration has continued to lean on the Trump-era health order to quickly expel migrants amid the pandemic, with an exception for unaccompanied children, who are allowed to stay in the U.S. for their immigration proceedings.

CNN reported last week that "more and more" migrant families are "self-separating" in Mexico, sending children alone to cross into the United States after first having been expelled, according to the U.S. Border Patrol's chief patrol agent of the Rio Grande Valley sector, Brian Hastings — though that may not be the case here.

While the full circumstances of Wilton's journey were not immediately known, his back-and-forth shows the perils of a program meant to prevent further spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. and highlights the potential unintended consequences of it.

After he was picked up by Border Patrol, the child spent around a week in CBP custody, beyond the 72-hour legal limit, and then was transferred to Health and Human Services care on April 8, according to the official.

A spokesperson for HHS said, as a matter of policy, the department does not identify individual unaccompanied children and will not comment on specific cases. A CBP spokesperson did not have an update on the child's whereabouts or expulsion.

The average time in CBP custody for unaccompanied children in the Rio Grande Valley is around seven days, the official said, adding that some children have been held for up to 21 days.

As of Monday, there were 2,200 children in CBP custody in the south Texas region, which is ground zero for Border Patrol apprehensions and has struggled with the overwhelming number of children crossing the border.

Over the weekend, the Rio Grande Valley sector made some progress, transferring around 1,000 children from CBP to HHS custody, the official said.

HHS is "starting to move quicker as they get the additional facilities up and running," the official said.

The number of unaccompanied minors in CBP custody has dropped 45%, according to the latest government data, amid an ongoing effort by the Biden administration to find suitable spaces to accommodate them after facing scrutiny for overcrowded facilities.

Nicaragua said it had located the child's father in the municipality of Muelle de los Bueyes, CNN reported Saturday. He was identified as Lázaro Gutiérrez Laguna, a 35-year-old farmer.

According to police, Gutiérrez said his wife, 30-year-old Meylin Obregón, had traveled with his son to the United States on February 7. Gutiérrez said two brothers of his wife who are residents of the United States had financed the journey.

The father added that on April 7 he learned through the news that his son had been found by a U.S. border agent.

Reports of unaccompanied migrant children being forced to stay overnight in parked buses at the Dallas convention center are “completely unacceptable” if true, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said Friday.

Dr. Amy Cohen, a psychiatrist and executive director of the advocacy group Every Last One, said a 15-year-old Honduran boy she is working with was held on a bus from Saturday to Wednesday, using the bus bathroom during that time and unable to move about freely or communicate with family. The boy encountered at least three other children who were held for the same time in the parking lot of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, said Cohen, who also has been in contact with another child who was confined earlier to a bus for an extended period.

It is unclear how many children were kept on buses overnight.

“This is completely unacceptable," Becerra said. "We’re quickly investigating this to get to the bottom of what happened, and we’ll work to make sure this never happens again. The safety and well-being of the children is our priority.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said “there’s no excuse for this kind of treatment."

The reports are “outrageous, they’re unacceptable and they do not meet our standard for child care," Psaki said.

The Honduran boy's experience, first reported by NBC News, comes as Health and Human Services massively expands its capacity to house migrant children until they can be placed with a sponsor in the United States, usually parents or close relatives, while their cases wind through immigration court. It comes in response to the largest influx of unaccompanied children on record.

The department, whose lodging is more suited to longer-term stays than Border Patrol holding facilities, has grown its capacity to about 20,000 beds from less than 1,000 in mid-February. It's opened 14 emergency intake centers, including at the Dallas convention center and other large venues. The Dallas facility opened in February with plans to house up to 3,000 children.

Health and Human Services had 20,397 unaccompanied children in its custody as of Wednesday.

The government flew the Honduran boy to Seattle to reunite with his mother and uncle after NBC News inquired about his status.

MVM Inc., a transportation contractor for the government, said it has “safely and professionally” transported migrant children and families for more than six years.

“Over the last seven weeks, the number of children needing escorts in this pandemic environment has increased to more than 7,100, creating challenging travel logistics and resulting in some extended wait times on their way to reunification sites,” the company said in a statement.

MVM said it experienced some delays at a 24-hour regional hub where buses meet to get children on their way to join family, which resulted in “a child staying at that site longer than our target wait time of four hours. This is a violation of our policy and we are conducting an internal review of this incident.”

The company said the child had access to an air-conditioned bus, food and snacks, bottled water and personal protective equipment.