Rep. Will Hurd on Wednesday called on the Trump administration to take steps to ensure that thousands of children detained at a migrant tent city in Tornillo, Texas, are properly cared for if the facility closes as planned on Dec. 31.
"First and foremost, this was a facility that was started off at around 500 beds and grew to almost 4,000," the Texas Republican told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
"Currently, there are 2,800 kids in this tent facility. The problem that I have with this is that the facility is supposed to close by the end of the month."
The contractor wants to leave the facility, but the Department of Health and Human Services has no plan to address the children who are there, said Hurd.
Out of the children detained there, 1,300 have an identifying sponsor who has done the paperwork and fingerprinting needed, and they should be released to their sponsor, said Hurd. Another 1,000 children have a sponsor identified but are waiting to be told where to go to provide fingerprints and documentation.
He blames the problem on a "manifestation of a bad policy."
"One of the things that we were seeing is this administration was trying to have background checks on every single person that could potentially have lived in a home," said Hurd. "This was increasing the length of time to do background checks."
However, there is now a new directive that says only senior sponsors have to go through fingerprint and background checks, said Hurd.
The lawmaker also pointed out that he has more border in his territory than any other member of Congress, and he'd prefer that technology be used to enforce the border than a physical wall.
"We can determine the difference between a bunny rabbit and a person," said Hurd. "We can track that person with a drone or camera and we can beam all this information we're getting to the men and women in border patrol. This is a fraction of the cost of a 30 foot high concrete structure that takes four hours to penetrate."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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