The number of migrant children being held in U.S. Border Patrol custody for longer than 10 days has quadrupled in the past week, according to documents obtained by Axios.
U.S. Border Patrol facilities are only permitted to hold children for 73 hours, but Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents leaked to the news outlet reportedly show that 3,314 children have been held in custody for longer than that limit, with 2,226 being held for more than five days and 823 for more than 10 days.
The documents were updated up through last Saturday, Axios noted. As of Monday, an additional 185 children have been held in the facilities for more than 10 days.
The Biden administration has received widespread criticism for its handling of the border surge, as journalists are not permitted to enter the facilities and report on the conditions inside. Biden officials told Axios that the administration maintains that border facilities are no place for children and that officials are working to move them to Health and Human Services shelters or to the homes of vetted relatives or sponsors.
President Biden told reporters on Sunday that he will visit the border “at some point,” though he did not provide further details.
Biden has publicly said to migrants not to come to the U.S. at this time, a statement Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas echoed this weekend.
“The message is quite clear: Do not come. The border is closed. The border is secure,” Mayorkas said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Mayorkas has pinned blame for the border crisis on the previous administration, saying officials are “rebuilding” systems that the Trump administration “tore down.”
“It is difficult because the entire system was dismantled by the prior administration,” Mayorkas said Sunday. “There was a system in place in both Republican and Democratic administrations, that was torn down during the Trump administration, and that is why the challenge is more acute than it ever has been before.”