“It is heartbreaking to find such small children fending for themselves in the middle of nowhere,” an official said.
As of Friday, Mayorkas said, 700 children were in Border Patrol custody across the entire U.S.-Mexico border, down from a record of nearly 6,000 in March. Speaking from a facility in Texas, he said the time children remained in custody had fallen from an average of 139 hours to 24 hours.
In a statement, the department attributed the decrease to improved processing and the removal of barriers that kept children from being placed with relatives and sponsors. “The Biden-Harris Administration inherited a dismantled system plagued by chaos and cruelty," Mayorkas said in a statement, adding that he was"proud" of the"dramatic progress" the agency has made in reforming the system. The children apprehended Sunday were taken to a processing facility before being transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services, Customs and Border Protection said.
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