Trump officials to begin building tent city to house migrant children: report

The Trump administration will use a city in Texas to house immigrant children, including those who have been separated from their parents as part of a “zero tolerance” policy at the border, according to NBC News. 

The report says the administration will put up tents in Tornillo, Texas. The “tent city,” as its being called, will be built by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and will hold about 450 beds for children. 

The report comes two days after it was reported that the administration was considering erecting tent cities at a military base in Texas to house unaccompanied migrant children currently held in detention. 

The number of migrant children being held by the government without their parents has surged by 20 percent since the administration began to enforce a policy that calls for separating migrant parents and children who are apprehended by authorities, according to McClatchy. 

The policy was announced in early May, and as a result DHS separates any child crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry with adults before prosecution.

This will not be the first time the U.S. government has built a tent city. NBC notes that U.S. Customs and Border Protection utilized tents to house immigrants in 2014 under President Obama. 

Nearly 1,800 families were separated at the U.S.–Mexico border between October 2016 and February of this year, according to Reuters. NBC News has reported that over 570 unaccompanied children were in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol as of last week.