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Huge Detention Facility for Migrant Kids Opens in Texas

The new site will hold as many as 1,600 children and teenagers who fled to escape violence in their home countries.

The Trump administration has opened a huge new detention facility in Texas that will hold as many as 1,600 migrant children and teenagers. The emergency facility in Carrizo Springs was originally a shelter for oil-field workers on government-leased land near the border, the Office of Refugee Resettlement said in a statement. The Associated Press reports the agency is also planning to use Army and Air Force bases in Georgia, Montana, and Oklahoma to detain an additional 1,400 kids over the summer. There has reportedly been an increase in children traveling to the U.S. alone to escape violence in their Central American homes. They will be detained in the new facilities while authorities decide if they can be released to relatives or family friends. Because the new facilities are temporary emergency shelters, they won’t be subject to state child-welfare licensing requirements.