The situation along the Mexican border has improved dramatically, with the total number of immigrants in detention cut nearly in half and with children now turned over to federal health officials within a day or two, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost told Congress on Wednesday.
Chief Provost said with nearly 10,000 people in border agency custody it’s still at crisis levels, but it’s far better than the 19,000 who were being held at the border at the peak in June.
She said families are being quickly released, and unaccompanied children are being released according to the law, which means they’re turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services within three days.
But the biggest problem now is single adults, who can be held longer. They’re supposed to be turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has better long-term facilities, but because Congress refused to provide more money for ICE beds in last month’s emergency spending bill, they’re stacked up in border custody.
“The problem I have right now is single adults because I have to wait for ICE to have the bed space,” Chief Provost told the House Appropriations Committee.
She also pushed back on accusations of a “culture of cruelty” among her agents, telling Congress not to judge all 20,000 personnel by the offensive comments of a few.
Revelations of a Facebook group of current and former agents who exchanged offensive posts about immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally and some prominent Democrats have enraged lawmakers.
Chief Provost said the group is being investigated, and offenders will be disciplined, but she pleaded with lawmakers not to overstate the problem.
“A few bad apples are not representative of the organization,” she said. “There are bad doctors, there are bad nurses, there are bad teachers. But we don’t vilify the entire groups of those individuals.”
Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee weren’t convinced.
“There appears to be a culture of cruelty that goes all the way to the top at the Department of Homeland Security,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Democrat.
As evidence, she said some children have reported being kicked awake throughout the night.
She also cited 20 cases she said she’s uncovered in which immigrant children who were in the U.S. illegally were nabbed by agents, put into detention and turned over to Health and Human Services although their parents live in the U.S.
She said they shouldn’t have been treated as unaccompanied minors and should have been allowed to call their parents.
Chief Provost agreed that her agency’s policy is to let children call their parents — but she said her hands are tied on turning them over to HHS. Under the law, a child apprehended without a parent present must be treated as unaccompanied, she said.
Rep. Nita Lowey, the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, took issue with another angle of that policy. She said children who come to the border with adult siblings or aunts or uncles shouldn’t be treated as unaccompanied and separated from those family members.
Chief Provost told the congresswoman her objection was to the law, and Congress can change it if it wants.
“As you know, it’s my job to enforce the laws on the books,” the career law enforcement officer told the congresswoman.
Ms. Lowey suggested she would pursue such a change.
“I think we have work to do together,” she said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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