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The number of unaccompanied children in Customs and Border Protection custody has dropped almost 84 percent within a month. As of Wednesday, there were 954 children in CBP facilities. Meanwhile on March 28, there were 5,767 children at the facilities. For the last few months, Border Patrol facilities have held on to migrants longer than the 72-hour limit and have failed to provide them with proper pandemic protections. The Department of Health and Human Services opened up several temporary shelters to give space between the minors. According to an official, the average time that children are in CBP custody is 28 hours. At the end of March, the average was 133 hours. CNN
In other federal immigration news…
Biden Cancels Military-funded Border Wall Projects
The Biden administration announced that it canceled border wall projects paid for with funds from Defense Department accounts. Former President Donald Trump funneled $10 billion from military construction accounts and counternarcotics programs to pay for the wall along the southern border. It’s unknown how much money the cancellation of the project will save or if leftover funds would be used to pay contractors who had to stop construction on Jan. 20. The Army Corps of Engineers estimated last fall that there would be roughly $3.3 billion in leftover funds if Biden decided not to continue with Trump’s construction plans for 285 additional miles on the wall. The Washington Post
Undocumented Immigrants Protest at the White House
On Friday, a group of undocumented immigrants blocked traffic by the White House to protest what they call Biden’s broken immigration promises. Movimiento Cosecha, an organization that supports the rights of undocumented immigrants, started this “Papers Not Crumbs” movement to emphasize how they’ve been strung along for decades on promises of immigration reform. Undocumented immigrants often avoid protests to prevent being arrested and deported, but were willing to tell Biden how they truly felt. “We’re going to do a civil disobedience action because I felt that we need to start doing drastic things in order for not just politicians, but the public, [to understand] that we need to fight for our own liberation and our own rights,” said Gema Lowe, an undocumented immigrant and labor organizer. The Hill
