The Long Beach City Council unanimously approved a plan Tuesday night to convert the city's convention center into a temporary shelter for up to 1,000 unaccompanied migrant children.
The site will be run by the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and FEMA. The agencies have already set up similar shelters at convention centers in San Diego and Dallas because of overcrowding at Border Patrol facilities.
Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia said the goal will be to reunite children with their family members or sponsors in the U.S. He also made a plea for compassion.
Read more on LAist.
Meanwhile, early data for March suggests that the U.S. is experiencing record high numbers of unaccompanied children and teenagers at the border. We discuss how the Biden administration is approaching the situation, and the planned conditions for the facility in Long Beach.
Guests:
Jordan Fabian, white house correspondent for Bloomberg News; he tweets
Cindy Allen, councilwoman representing District 2 in Long Beach, where the Long Beach Convention Center is located; she introduced the motion to convert the convention center into a temporary shelter
Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Southern California, which represents people who would otherwise face immigration judges alone, including unaccompanied minors; she tweets