Stephanie Keith/Reuters
The Office of Refugee Resettlement, charged with taking care of unaccompanied minors who have arrived at the border or who were separated from their parents, has budgeted for a potential increase in the number of child separations, according to documents obtained by Slate. In the documents, the agency estimated that it would need 25,400 beds for migrant children by the end of the year and an additional $585 million to pay for them. The Department of Health and Human Services—which houses the ORR—is planning on asking for more money from Congress, and pulling funding from an HIV/AIDS program and other refugee resettlement initiatives to cover the costs. In its estimates, the agency assumes that children would have to be turned over to ORR’s care after being detained with their families due to the Flores settlement—which does not permit child detention for longer than 20 days. The Trump administration’s request to extend migrant child detentions was recently rejected by a judge.