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When the influx of migrant families hit its peak in 2019, CBP stations and their staff were not equipped to handle it. Border Patrol agents normally out patrolling the desert were tasked with child care.

The Biden administration is now grappling with the added challenge of having to house more migrant children amid the pandemic and as they break from the former president's hardline posture of turning everyone back. While CBP doesn't provide the ages of all minors who they apprehend crossing illegally, officials have described the majority of them as children in their early to mid-teens.

The Biden administration said it is attempting to get out ahead of this problem, in part, by re-opening Carrizo Springs before migration patterns hit the same level.

\"We need to figure out how to treat them humanely and keep them safe, and in the time of COVID, that means we needed to open an additional facility,\" Psaki added on \"The View.\" \"This is incredibly difficult. It's heart-wrenching and it's a really difficult decision, but this is the best decision we felt we could make to keep these kids safe and get them into the right places and right homes.\"

\"PHOTO:
Joe Raedle/Getty Images, FILE
PHOTO: Young people walk the grounds of the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Fla., July 15, 2020.
>

The administration's defense in reopening the Carrizo Springs facility, which is made to handle overflow and was last used in 2019, is twofold: to guard against situations where undocumented minors are held in CBP facilities longer than they should be and to provide proper spacing amid the pandemic.

Psaki has described the crisis of unaccompanied migrant children as \"heartbreaking\" but in short, said at a briefing that the administration has no perfect solution: \"This is a difficult situation. It's a difficult choice. That's the choice we've made.\"

\"There was not enough space in the existing facilities, and, if we were to abide by COVID protocols. That's the process and the step. This facility in Texas, which has been reopened, has been revamped, has been -- there are teachers, there is medical facilities, and our objective is to move them -- move these kids quickly from there to vetted sponsored families into places where they can safely be,\" Psaki said Wednesday.

\"PHOTO:
El Paso Times via USA Today Network
PHOTO: An Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter for unaccompanied migrant children is under construction in El Paso, Texas, June 10, 2020.
>

The Carrizo Springs facility last housed migrant children in 2019. In July of that year, when the number of unaccompanied children coming across the border started to decline after a peak earlier in the year, the facility was put into \"warm status,\" meaning it was out of use but maintained.

Crossing attempts continued to decline as the Trump administration pressed forward with hardline asylum restrictions and its \"Remain in Mexico\" protocols.

When the global health crisis hit in 2020 the Trump administration implemented further restrictions at the border, technically under the direction of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These restrictions, known as \"Title 42 expulsions,\" resulted in the immediate removal of the vast majority of people who attempted to cross into the U.S.

The Biden administration has continued the expulsions for everyone except children.

In recent months, the number of unauthorized border crossing attempts has begun to rise, according to the latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Last month, CBP averaged 3,000 arrests per day. Responding to a request from ABC News, CBP declined to share the average daily intake and referral numbers for unaccompanied children citing concerns about the impact to law enforcement operations.

\"PHOTO:
El Paso Times via USA Today Network, FILE
PHOTO: An Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter for unaccompanied migrant children is under construction in El Paso, Texas, June 10, 2020.
>

What are the alternatives?

Now that the Biden administration is no longer sending children back to Mexico, their options are limited. There's broad consensus from CBP officials and their critics that Border Patrol stations are not fit to hold children long-term.

That leaves facilities like Carrizo Springs as one of the few viable options for minors to be held while authorities locate and verify potential sponsors to house them in the U.S.

\"A bigger solution and system must be contemplated so we don't have to resort to these kinds of measures in the future,\" Theresa Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center said in a recent tweet. \"But while we're building that, we have to ask what is the best we can do right now?\"

While the ultimate aim is to place children with sponsors, vetting them takes time. When the Trump administration tried to expedite this process, they faced the liability of potentially sending a child to an unfit or dangerous home.

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