Immigrant Children

Local legal experts react to measures taken to deal with unaccompanied children who are crushing the U.S. border.

Hammond.

As of sunday morning, u.s. border patrol was holding more than 4,200 unaccompanied migrant children in short-term holding facilities, with nearly 3,000 of those unaccompanied minors cbp custody for more than 72 hours.

News 12's kenan scott joins us now live with what local legal experts are saying about the implications of this influx of migrant children.

Emily, andrew according to the department of homeland security on saturday, the biden administration is deploying fema to the mexican border to help care for thousands of unaccompanied migrant teens and children who are arriving in overwhelming numbers and being packed into detention cells and tent shelters.

I spoke with local legal experts who weighed in on the situation, telling me that unfortunately, a lot of this is a continuation of what we've seen in recent years, and will likely continue until lasting immigration reform is passed.

The u.s. house of representatives plans to vote this week on a measure that would protect undocumented immigrants who were brought to the u.s. as children, as well as provide legal status to farm workers.

The move comes as the biden administration plans on sending fema agents to the southern border to care for massive influxes of unaccompanied migrant children who are being held in detention centers.

Chattanooga immigration attorney terry olsen says that due to a law under president trump known as title 42, unaccompanied migrant children had to remain outside of the u.s. due to covid restrictions first and then put through a process before being admitted to the country.

But now with president biden in office, that law has been rescinded.

He says that this has led to the influx of migrant children coming across the border, and due to covid protocols in these detention centers, the process is being delayed.

"you have had an uptick in terms of the amount of children applying but that's because they were also delayed for the last month or two or three months because of these policies so now it's up by almost 30 percent and what's also happened in terms of covid that you weren't allowed to have the same amount of beds in the shelter served to kids."

Brittany faith, another chattanooga-based immigration expert, says that this is a situation that has occurred multiple times over the last few years.

"there have been several times where this has happened previously so in 2014 this happened with the obama administration but this also happened in the trump administration in 2018 and 2019.

And a lot of that surge doesn't necessarily come from our political process, but a lot of it comes from what's happening in their home countries."

Both political parties have made attempts at immigration reform over the last several decades, but no legislative efforts have been successfully passed into law.

It's been reported that homeland security officials have requested that employees volunteer to go to the border immediately to help care for the minors and assist with administrative duties and security functions.

Reporting live in chattanooga, kenan scott