Biden administration releasing families from migrant centers

Ellis Island was set up to process legal immigrants. Calling this “Ellis Island-style” is a deliberate attempt to conflate legal and illegal immigration.

The Biden administration will transform two Texas facilities where detained migrant families are held into Ellis Island-style rapid processing centers, meaning adults and children who cross the border will be housed for a maximum of 72 hours before being released into the U.S. In a court filing Friday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said families will continue to be detained at a 2,400-bed detention center in Karnes City and an 839-bed detention center in Dilley in Texas, but the U.S. government intends to hold adults and children at those sites for three days or less. Migrant families previously held at a third facility, the 96-bed Berks County family detention center in Leesport, Pa., have all been released, according the ICE disclosure made Friday in the decades-old Flores lawsuit filed on behalf of migrant children. That detention center will instead be used by ICE to hold adults. All three family detention centers opened when now-President Biden was vice president to President Barack Obama. While running for president, Biden pledged to release detained families.

Biden administration releasing families from migrant centers