Operators of Tent City for Migrant Kids Say They Want Out But 'Can't Abandon the Children'
The San Antonio-based nonprofit that is operating a controversial West Texas tent city for migrant children wants out of the job. But the government isn’t revealing the future of the facility in Tornillo, a farming community southeast of El Paso, that currently holds about 2,300 children.
“We don’t want to be there, but we can’t abandon the children,” Evy Ramos, a spokeswoman for BCFS Health and Human Services, which has operated the Tornillo facility since June, told Texas Monthly. The company has agreed to a short-term contract with the federal government despite long-stated misgivings about managing the complex. “We have not agreed to another extension, which is not to say that at some point we might,” Ramos said about the company’s contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The fate of Tornillo comes as, once again, the issue of border security and what to do with Central Americans fleeing to the United States because of violence in their homeland, is heating up. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security asked the Pentagon for a 45-day extension for the deployment of U.S. Army forces along the border. The troops are scheduled to withdraw by December 15, but the Pentagon is expected to approve the DHS request.
“Given the ongoing threat at our Southern border—today the Department of Homeland Security submitted a request for assistance to the Department of Defense to extend its support through January 31, 2019,” DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman said in a statement to the Washington Post.
Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/operators-tent-city-migrant-kids-say-want-cant-abandon-children/
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