Concerns about child trafficking and COVID-19 in Texas amid surge of children crossing border

Hannah Falcon, John Thomas, Arezow Doost, John Engel/KXAN

Updated: Mar 21, 2021 / 08:03 PM CDT

FILE – In this Dec. 11, 2018, file photo, an asylum-seeking boy from Central America runs down a hallway after arriving from an immigration detention center to a shelter in San Diego. A federal judge on Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020, urged the Trump administration to do more to help court-appointed researchers find hundreds of parents who were separated from their children after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border beginning in 2017. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

AUSTIN, Texas (Nexstar) — Unaccompanied migrant children and teens are crossing the border in the thousands. In the past few weeks, this increase in migration has put a strain on resources in Texas.

A convention center in Dallas is temporarily hosting 3,000 unaccompanied teen boys. They arrived by bus early Thursday and will be at the site for up to 90 days. Other Texas cities are expected to host migrant children as well.

Gov. Greg Abbott and other Texas Republicans say the surge is because of President Biden’s policies. The governor is asking the Biden administration to give Texas law enforcement access to the unaccompanied children in Dallas.

In his first legislative session as governor, Abbott approved nearly $1 billion for border security. A NewsNation affiliate KXAN investigation found that this led to mostly low-level arrests in 2014-2016; 6% were felony drug charges and 1% were human trafficking.

“The state of Texas will always step up and fill in the gaps left open by Washington,” Abbott said.

The Department of Public Safety is now expanding the scope of Operation Lone Star to include human trafficking. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said this is to protect the migrant families.

“They’re being threatened by the cartels,” McCraw said. “When the cartel says if you talk we’re going to go kill your families, they actually mean that.”

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Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Austin) says the Biden administration caused the recent migration surge on day one when they ended a policy that held asylum seekers in their home countries.

“I think this policy actually, ironically, has encouraged separation of families by allowing these traffickers to take these children, exploit them and then dump them across the river into the United States,” McCaul said.

However, Denise Gilman, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas, said the Trump administration is actually to blame.

“I would put a lot of the blame on the prior administration dismantling systems, therefore, making it very difficult to get up to speed as necessary but the Biden administration absolutely need to take very important steps very quickly,” Gilman said.

Sandra Sanchez with NewsNation affiliate BorderReport.com says the policy of the United States has always been to accept unaccompanied migrant children regardless of the administration.

“When these children came across, they were accepted,” Sanchez said. “So it’s not actually a fair criticism. This did happen in the Biden. It’s happening in the Biden administration. It happened in the Trump administration.”

The COVID-19 pandemic is making the migration situation worse.

“What’s different this time is the coronavirus pandemic that’s happening, as well as a confluence of events with a new law that took effect in Mexico at the same time that the Biden administration came into office,” Sanchez said. “And this new law said that no young migrant children can be detained in Mexican facilities.”

To help curb the coronavirus from spreading, Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley is testing the incoming children.

“We can be able to make them safe, make sure that our community safe, make sure that anybody entering to the center is safe,” said Sister Norma Pimentel. “Nobody that enters the bus station or goes to the airport has COVID.”