Biden administration facing dramatic surge in unaccompanied children at the border: report

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The Biden administration is facing a dramatic surge in unaccompanied children at the border, a sign of how resources have been overwhelmed within just a few months of the new administration.

Axios reports that in the week ending March 1, the Border Patrol referred an average of 321 minors per day to Health and Human Services (HHS). It’s a dramatic increase from 47 at the beginning of January and an average of 203 in early February, the outlet reported.

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While not confirming the numbers, HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) said in a statement to Fox that it "continues to work aggressively to meet its responsibility, by law, to provide shelter for UC referred to its care by the Department of Homeland Security."

"HHS will continue to utilize all available options to safely care for the children referred to us. These options include both short-term and long-term solutions," the statement said. "In the short-term, we can ensure children don’t spend more time in border patrol facilities than necessary by using influx facilities when additional space is immediately needed. Simultaneously, ORR is committed to aggressively moving toward the long-term goal of acquiring enough state-licensed beds in our care provider network to reduce the need for influx facilities."

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that it cannot share the specific number of migrants encountered, outside of the monthly totals, as they are law enforcement sensitive. It also said that numbers have been increasing since April 2020 due to factors including violence, insecurity and famine in Central American countries. 

The administration has been facing down a surge in migrant numbers as it has also worked rapidly to end a series of Trump-era border protections and other measures that had been designed to end the "pull factors" drawing migrants north.

Biden’s administration has wound down the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), ended construction of the border wall, and restarted catch-and-release – by which migrants are released into the U.S. interior. That practice was ended by the Trump administration in 2019. 

It has kept in place Title 42 protections – which allow for migrants to be turned around quickly due to the coronavirus pandemic – but it has so far not sought to apply them to unaccompanied children.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Monday that DHS is working to "replace the cruelty" of the Trump administration with "an orderly, humane and safe immigration process."

"We are not saying don’t come. We are saying don’t come now, because we will be able to deliver a safe and orderly process for them as quickly as possible," he said.

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Republicans and Trump-era officials have warned about a surge in migrants at the border and blamed it squarely on Biden.

"It took the new administration only a few weeks to turn this unprecedented accomplishment into a self-inflicted humanitarian and national security disaster," former President Donald Trump said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Sunday.

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Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, meanwhile, have requested a briefing on the crisis.

"Proper oversight requires that subcommittee members have the opportunity to hear directly from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials, and to question them about the escalating crisis and whether they have plans to stop the surge," the letter to Immigration and Citizenship Subcommittee Chair Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said.

Fox News' Griff Jenkins contributed to this report.