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Speaker 1: The message is quite clear: Do not come. The border is closed, the border is secure.

Speaker 2: It's going to get a lot worse, springtime, summer, more and more come over. The message is coming back that hey, we got a new president. Come on in. We're open for business to traffickers, and guess what? They're right here.

Joe Biden: Don't leave your town or city or community.

Speaker 3: In the spring more people do come, so there will be more as there are now, but they have to know, as the President has said, don't come.

Speaker 4: Joe Biden needs to get down here to the border and look at exactly what he's done.

Speaker 5: We know how to address it. We have a plan. We are executing on our plan and we will succeed. This is what we do.

Tanzina Vega: President Biden's administration is struggling to respond to the increased number of unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border. As of this weekend, Customs and Border Protection said there were more than 5,000 minors in its custody. Many of them have been held in Border Patrol facilities for longer than the 72-hour maximum required by law, and lawyers who interviewed minors held at one of those facilities earlier this month say children reported overcrowding and insufficient access to showers and sunlight. [facility audio]

Recent increases due in large part to the Biden administration's decision to stop using a Trump-era public health order to expel unaccompanied minors at the southern border. Instead, the Biden administration is setting up temporary holding centers for some of the minors. So far, media outlets have not been allowed access to these facilities. I'm Tanzina Vega, and assessing the Biden administration's response at the southern border is where we start today on The Takeaway.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez is an immigration reporter for CBS News, and he joins me now. Camilo, welcome to the show.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez: Hi, Tanzina. Thanks for having me.

Tanzina: Who are the children we are talking about and where are they coming from? What ages are we talking about?

Camilo: That is an excellent question. More than 9,400 unaccompanied minors entered US Border custody last month. That is a record high for a February, Tanzina. The vast majority of these minors that were apprehended in February hailed from Central America's northern triangle, which is comprised as you know of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Many of them are teenagers who flee poverty-stricken communities in Guatemala. Some of them are fleeing gang threats in places like Honduras and El Salvador. Gangs are known to recruit teenagers in the region to partake in criminal activity.

The region has also been hard hit by recent devastating hurricanes that made landfall last year and it is still recovering. There are many different push factors that are contributing to the sharp increase, but as you mentioned, there has also been a policy change in regards to this population. The Trump administration invoking a public health authority decided that it was going to expel most border crossers, including unaccompanied children during the pandemic, under the premise that they could spread the Coronavirus if allowed to enter and continue their immigration proceedings here in the US.

The Biden administration made the policy decision, Tanzina, not to expel unaccompanied children, but it is still expelling and using that public health order to turn away migrant adults and some families with children.

Tanzina: I was just going to ask you, Camilo, whether or not that meant that families were being separated. What you're saying is unaccompanied minors who arrive at the southern border are being allowed in, families and independent adults are not. Is that correct way to assess the current administration's approach?

Camilo: That is 100% accurate. The Biden administration has continued to use this Trump-era public health order to expel most migrant adults and some families with children, but it made the policy decision to protect unaccompanied children from these rapid expulsions.

Tanzina: Let's talk about the facilities that are now being created to house these children, we're hearing. Now, of course, we should note as we noted in the introduction, that media so far have not been allowed access to any of these facilities. Has that changed, Camilo?

Camilo: It has not changed. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Border Patrol facilities, has yet to allow journalists inside these facilities during the Biden administration. The Department of Health and Human Services, which operates state-licensed shelters as well as emergency facilities for unaccompanied migrant children, has also yet to allow journalists to enter some of these facilities. Both departments have cited Coronavirus restrictions for not yet allowing journalists to enter these facilities, but they both have said that they are working to facilitate visits and tours. They have already allowed members of Congress and others to tour the facilities, but obviously, we are still waiting for them to allow journalists like us to enter these facilities.

Tanzina: What do we know, given that there haven't been any media allowed into these facilities so far. What do we know about the conditions that we are hearing about? We're hearing some reports that some of these children are saying they haven't showered in days, that they don't get adequate access to the outdoors, to sunlight. We know that the Associated Press at least reported that the Department of Health and Human Services has stopped sending minors to one of the centers in West Texas because of an alleged COVID-19 outbreak. What is really happening behind the scenes at a lot of these facilities so far, what do we know?

Camilo: Sure. So for context, Border Patrol has usually 72 hours under US law to transfer unaccompanied children it takes into custody to the US Refugee Agency, which is an office located inside the Department of Health and Human Services. Border Patrol is a law enforcement agency that oversees dozens of stations across the US-Mexico border that were built to primarily detain adult migrant men.

These are facilities that have cinderblock cells, usually with one toilet. Migrants have dubbed these stations dog kennels, and even ice boxes, because of the cold experience there. Border Patrol does have one facility in South Texas specifically designed to hold unaccompanied minors and families with children, but even that facility, Tanzina, is designed for short-term custody. What we know is that according to attorneys who interviewed some of the children detained at this facility in South Texas, the children have reported taking turns sleeping on the floor because of overcrowding.

They quoted not seeing the sun in nearly a week and showering once in as many as seven days. These are obviously poor and not ideal conditions for children to be held in. The reason for this massive backlog of children and these unfit Border Patrol facilities, is because the US Refugee Agency, which is in charge of their long-term care, is currently scrambling to find bed space for the high number of children entering US border custody.

Tanzina: Was the US Refugee Agency not prepared for this, given the previous couple of years where we've seen surges at the border?

Camilo: That's a great question. What we know is that the US Refugee Agency, during the Trump administration had to downsize its bed capacity to implement social distancing. The agency has more than 13,000 beds for migrant children, but it had to reduce that capacity to about 8,000 beds. Right now, the agency is currently holding more than 10,000 children, so it is way past its COVID era capacity. It is scrambling to expand beds that had been taken offline during the pandemic, as well as to establish new emergency facilities like the one you mentioned in Midland, Texas, as well as a convention center in Dallas, to house some of these migrant children.

To be frank here, Tanzina, the agency is going to need to open a lot more facilities and potentially activate more beds in order to reduce the 5,000 figure of unaccompanied migrant children currently stuck in Border Patrol facilities.

Tanzina: Camilo, tell us a little bit about what rights these children have when they come to the United States. Do they have the right to legal counsel? Do they have other rights that will help them navigate this process?

Camilo: Sure. Under US law, unaccompanied children, unlike migrant adults adults and families, are protected from expedited deportations. They are supposed to be transferred, as we mentioned earlier, to the US Refugee Agency, and they are connected with lawyers and sometimes child advocates, depending on their circumstances. The children are allowed, unlike adults, to undergo their asylum proceedings before an asylum officer at US Citizenship and Immigration Services, rather than in a courtroom setting before a judge and an ICE attorney that will seek to deport them. That is the situation that migrant adults and families face, but unaccompanied children are allowed to undergo these child-sensitive interviews.

In addition to asylum, they can also request visas that are designed for children who were abused, neglected, or abandoned by one or both parents. They have multiple avenues to request humanitarian relief in the US, and they have broader access to these humanitarian programs than adults. Again, it is important to note that the Trump administration suspended all of these legal safeguards this past year because of the pandemic. The Biden administration has reinstated them, and it is now struggling to logistically find a way to house the number of children coming in.

Tanzina: This, Camilo, is obviously something that is not an isolated incident. The fact that, as you mentioned at the top of the conversation, a lot of the unaccompanied minors that are coming to the United States are fleeing persecution, gang warfare, really coming here for their own safety and well being.

But the United States historically has had a role in conflict in Central America, and in some ways you could even point a direct or indirect line to our involvement, in the political instability that some of these Central American countries are facing.

To that end, what has the Biden administration done or said to the leaders of many of these countries where many of the unaccompanied minors are coming from? Has there been some sort of international outreach to work together to solve this problem?

Camilo: Ye. For context, the Trump administration really focused on implementing policies designed to deter families, children and adults from coming to the US-Mexico border. The Biden administration has said that those deterrence policies were ineffective, and inhumane. It has said that--

Tanzina: But they're still saying “Don't come.”

Camilo: They're still saying, “Don't come” but what they're arguing is that they shouldn't come because the borders are closed, because of this public health order, and because the journey is a dangerous one. They've promised to reinstate programs like the Central Americans Minors Program, instituted during the Obama years, that allows some children in Central America to come here to reunite with family in the US, as long as their relatives have legal status here.

Obviously, they have brought in the legal pathways that these children can employ to come here, but it will take some time for those policies to have a direct impact on the current numbers we're seeing. In addition to that, it has also asked Congress to authorize $4 billion in foreign aid to these three Central American countries, to try to curtail some of these push factors like poverty, violence, that are plaguing some parts of the region.

Tanzina: I wanted to ask you, you are covering this issue but you're also-- As many of us are watching how the rest of the media, I should say “the media” in big quotes here, is covering it. You had a Twitter thread earlier this week talking about some of the themes that you're seeing. Where do you think media outlets are getting the story right versus getting it wrong?

Camilo: Well, I think it is fair to report and highlight the dire humanitarian consequences that are currently happening as a result of the high number of children coming into US Border custody, the overcrowded conditions that they're facing, the scramble to find bed space for them, and the logistical problems that the Biden administration is facing to deal with this influx.

But I think it is also important to understand that this is not, in my opinion, a national security crisis. This is a direct result of these push factors that we've mentioned in Central America, that push many of these families and children to come here. It is also important to note that many of these children and families have been waiting in northern Mexico for months and even years, but were not allowed to seek asylum during the Trump administration because of all the different policies that were instituted for the past four years that restricted or even barred their ability to seek protection in the US.

I think it is important to just contextualize that, and it is also important, Tanzina, to note that the alternative that some are proposing to allowing these minors to come in, is to expel them back to Mexico or to their home countries and that policy also has humanitarian implications. Many of these children would potentially be returned to danger, as we have reported on this past year, because that indeed happened.

During the pandemic, many children fleeing domestic abuse, gang violence, and other factors, were returned to their home countries and their parents were not notified. That is important to highlight, that there is really no easy solution to this issue right now. Both choices have humanitarian consequences and it is important for the public to just weigh in and consider all of those factors.

Tanzina: Camilo, finally there were reports a couple of months ago about multiple children, unaccompanied minors who had been separated from their families here in the United States. Hundreds of children in fact, that were said to have been separated from their families, and now the US government is unable to track down all of their families. Has there been any movement on that front?

Camilo: The Biden administration created a DHS-led task force to specifically locate parents and children who are yet to be reunited after they were separated by the Trump administration during the zero-tolerance border crackdown in 2017 and 2018. But many parents, according to the American Civil Liberties Union and other lawyers representing the families, are still in Central America waiting to be reunited.

Because the big issue, Tanzina, is that during the Trump administration, the government did not agree to allow located families who are still separated, to reunite here on American soil. It only allowed parents to choose to either allow their children to live here in the US with sponsors, or to return the children back to Central America so they can reunite there. Attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union are pushing the Biden administration to allow these families to reunite here on American soil, rather than forcing them to make this choice of allowing the children to be here and continuing to be separated, or being back in Central America where some of them are fleeing certain danger.

Tanzina: It's a critical topic and one we'll be staying very close to. Camilo Montoya-Galvez is an immigration reporter for CBS News. Camilo, thanks so much.

Camilo: Thanks, Tanzina.

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