Last migrant teenagers leave large detention camp in Texas
Posted Jan 11, 2019 02:03:27 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
TORNILLO, Texas — The non-profit group running what once was the largest U.S. detention camp housing migrant teenagers says the last children have left the facility.
The federal grantee that operated the tent city in Tornillo, Texas, said the centre is shutting down beginning Friday. BCFS Health and Human Services’ spokeswoman Krista Piferrer said everything would be removed from the site by the end of January.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services oversees the care of migrant children. The agency did not immediately respond, but a spokesman said last month the centre stopped receiving new referrals.
The Tornillo facility opened in June in an isolated pocket of the Texas desert with capacity for 360 children. It expanded into a guarded detention camp that held more than 2,700 largely Central American teens.
The Associated Press
