BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Children’s faces pressed
against glass. Hundreds of young boys and girls covered with aluminum
foil-like blankets next to chain link fences topped with barbed wire.
The pungent odor that comes with keeping people in close quarters.
These
were the scenes Wednesday from tours of crowded Border Patrol stations
in South Texas and Arizona, where thousands of immigrants are being held
before they are transferred to other shelters around the country.
It
was the first time the media was given access to the facilities since
President Barack Obama called the more than 47,000 unaccompanied
children who have entered the country illegally this budget year an
"urgent humanitarian situation."
The surge in minors, mostly from Central America, has overwhelmed the U.S. government.
The
children pose a particular challenge because the law requires that they
be transferred from Border Patrol stations like the ones in Texas and
Arizona to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours.
From
there, they are sent to shelters for several weeks as the government
tries to reunite them with family in the U.S. The network of some 100
shelters around the country has been over capacity for months and is now
caring for more than 7,600 children.
The tours were a shift from
previous weeks when the government refused to provide basic details
about the location of the facilities. But the tours also came with
restrictions, such as no interaction with children and no on-the-record
conversations with employees.
Inside the Fort Brown station in
Brownsville, dozens of young boys were separated from dozens of young
girls, with many lying under blankets on concrete floors. Mothers with
children still younger were in another cell.
Happier faces could be found in a side yard outside, where young children colored pictures under a
camouflage tent.
A
group of about a dozen girls of perhaps 5 or 6 sat under another tent
outside the shower trailer, dark hair wet and shiny. Women wearing blue
gloves combed each girl’s hair. Tables held stacks of clean bluejeans,
T-shirts and toiletries.
Deeper into the yard, teen girls kicked a
soccer ball and tossed a football with workers from the Federal
Emergency Management Agency.
In Nogales, Arizona, girls playing
soccer with two male border agents shrieked when their ball crossed over
the chain link fence and away from the small recreational area covered
by a white tent. Others playing basketball cheered on their teammates.
Inside, the approximately 1,000 children in the clean, 120,000-square-foot warehouse were silent.
In
a roomy area with teenage boys, a large, high-definition TV playing the
World Cup went largely ignored. A small group of boys played soccer,
but most lay on tiny mattresses and covered themselves with thin,
heat-reflective blankets that looked like aluminum foil.
Chain link fences 15 feet tall and topped with barbed wire separated the children by age and gender.
Federal
agents said they could not provide an estimate of the number of minors
at the facility because the figure is fluid as children transition in
and out.
Authorities at the Nogales station have struggled to adjust to their new role as temporary caretakers.

For
example, it took a few days of children rejecting breakfast burritos
before agents learned that Central Americans aren’t accustomed to flour
tortillas. FEMA renegotiated its contract with a food vendor to begin
receiving corn tortillas instead.
The children are fed three times a day and take turns by group to use the 200-seat dining area.
___
Galván reported from Nogales, Arizona.