Wave of Migrant Children Has Texas Towns Scrambling to Set Up Housing

By Published on December 21, 2015

As a wave of Central American children are crossing the US border alone fleeing violence and poverty in their countries, new facilities to house these children are popping up with just a few days’ notice in southern border towns.

In Rockwall, Texas, hundreds of children arrived Saturday to a hot spaghetti meal. Residents in the town north-east of Dallas may not welcome the federal government’s last-minute announcement that they will place a facility in their town, but they are receiving the displaced children as warmly, and quickly, as they can.

“A lady called me from Ohio and chewed me up, called me treasonous, everything,” said Eddie Walker, who owns the Sabine Creek ranch camp, where hundreds of children arrived Saturday. “But locally the response has been almost all positive. People want to help.”

In October and November, more than 10,000 unaccompanied minors crossed the border through Mexico, more than twice as many as the same months last year. As a result US detention centers have overflowed, and the government is building temporary shelters.

Towns selected for shelters in Texas and California are finding out sometimes a couple days in advance, and residents are scrambling to understand what impact the centers will have. “I just got called to a meeting where the federal government told us what they were going to do,” said David Sweet, a judge in Rockwall. “They said, ‘We are going to build this in your backyard.’”

 

Read the article “Wave of Migrant Children Has Texas Towns Scrambling to Set Up Housing” on theguardian.com.

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