The Trump Administration Is Going to Build a Tent City at the Border for Migrant Children

“This is not what America stands for.”

A member of a Central American migrant caravan, holding a child, looks through the border fence.Hans-Maximo Musielik/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

The Trump administration will build a tent city near the US-Mexico border in Texas to house hundreds of migrant children, including those separated from their parents.

Approximately 450 kids will be held in temporary shelters at Tornillo Land Point of Entry, a border crossing point near El Paso, NBC reported Wednesday. According to the Washington Post, temporary shelters at Tornillo were last used to house migrant children and families in 2016. The camp will have recreation areas and educational programming, along with air conditioning. 

Eleanor Acer, director of refugee protection at the nonprofit Human Rights First, called the decision to hold children at Tornillo “despicable.” “Many of these children have been brought to this country to escape unspeakable violence, and rather than offer them protection this administration is ripping them away from the only family they’ve ever known, prosecuting their parents, and holding them in inhumane conditions,” Acer said. “This is not what America stands for.”

Since April, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed federal prosecutors to criminally charge every unauthorized border crosser under a new “zero-tolerance” policy—a process that involves taking children away from parents facing federal charges—the government has separated thousands of children and placed them in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement. ORR’s 100 or so shelters, which already housed thousands of so-called unaccompanied minors who crossed the border without their parents, soon neared capacity. On Tuesday, McClatchy reported that as HHS sought additional space, the department was considering erecting tent cities for between 1,000 and 5,000 children on military sites, including Fort Bliss near El Paso, Abilene’s Dyess Air Force Base, and Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo.

The family separation policy has drawn rebukes from church leaders and lawmakers, including Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. Congressional Republicans are currently considering a draft bill that would end the practice, the Washington Post reports

On Wednesday, NBC reported on the jail-like conditions inside an existing ORR shelter for 1,500 boys, noting that the children were allowed outside for just two hours a day and that the shelter was already overcrowded, with five boys packed into each room built for four. That shelter, a converted Wal-Mart operated by nonprofit Southwest Key, was a licensed child care facility with trained staff. But Southwest Key’s president told reporter Jacob Soboroff that new tent cities on federal property—including, perhaps, Tornillo—may not be required to have a license.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON MOTHER JONES' FINANCES

We need to start being more upfront about how hard it is keeping a newsroom like Mother Jones afloat these days.

Because it is, and because we're fresh off finishing a fiscal year, on June 30, that came up a bit short of where we needed to be. And this next one simply has to be a year of growth—particularly for donations from online readers to help counter the brutal economics of journalism right now.

Straight up: We need this pitch, what you're reading right now, to start earning significantly more donations than normal. We need people who care enough about Mother Jones’ journalism to be reading a blurb like this to decide to pitch in and support it if you can right now.

Urgent, for sure. But it's not all doom and gloom!

Because over the challenging last year, and thanks to feedback from readers, we've started to see a better way to go about asking you to support our work: Level-headedly communicating the urgency of hitting our fundraising goals, being transparent about our finances, challenges, and opportunities, and explaining how being funded primarily by donations big and small, from ordinary (and extraordinary!) people like you, is the thing that lets us do the type of journalism you look to Mother Jones for—that is so very much needed right now.

And it's really been resonating with folks! Thankfully. Because corporations, powerful people with deep pockets, and market forces will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. Only people like you will.

There's more about our finances in "News Never Pays," or "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," and we'll have details about the year ahead for you soon. But we already know this: The fundraising for our next deadline, $350,000 by the time September 30 rolls around, has to start now, and it has to be stronger than normal so that we don't fall behind and risk coming up short again.

Please consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

—Monika Bauerlein, CEO, and Brian Hiatt, Online Membership Director

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ON MOTHER JONES' FINANCES

We need to start being more upfront about how hard it is keeping a newsroom like Mother Jones afloat these days.

Because it is, and because we're fresh off finishing a fiscal year, on June 30, that came up a bit short of where we needed to be. And this next one simply has to be a year of growth—particularly for donations from online readers to help counter the brutal economics of journalism right now.

Straight up: We need this pitch, what you're reading right now, to start earning significantly more donations than normal. We need people who care enough about Mother Jones’ journalism to be reading a blurb like this to decide to pitch in and support it if you can right now.

Urgent, for sure. But it's not all doom and gloom!

Because over the challenging last year, and thanks to feedback from readers, we've started to see a better way to go about asking you to support our work: Level-headedly communicating the urgency of hitting our fundraising goals, being transparent about our finances, challenges, and opportunities, and explaining how being funded primarily by donations big and small, from ordinary (and extraordinary!) people like you, is the thing that lets us do the type of journalism you look to Mother Jones for—that is so very much needed right now.

And it's really been resonating with folks! Thankfully. Because corporations, powerful people with deep pockets, and market forces will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. Only people like you will.

There's more about our finances in "News Never Pays," or "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," and we'll have details about the year ahead for you soon. But we already know this: The fundraising for our next deadline, $350,000 by the time September 30 rolls around, has to start now, and it has to be stronger than normal so that we don't fall behind and risk coming up short again.

Please consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

—Monika Bauerlein, CEO, and Brian Hiatt, Online Membership Director

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate