WASHINGTON – The Biden government has opened more than a dozen emergency shelters for children in the past few weeks to help remove migrant children from border police custody. Congress centers, concert halls, military bases and camps for oil field workers were used to counteract the increase in unaccompanied minors.

The postponement has allowed the administration to reduce overcrowding and meet the legal requirement that children be quickly removed from border guards’ custody. However, the new shelters give cause for concern to some immigrants and child welfare advocates that conditions inside are unsuitable to hold children for long periods of time. The shelters are a short-term solution as they work to open more licensed shelters, three administrative officials said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported a record number of unaccompanied children illegally crossing the southern border in the past few months. Hundreds of children come every day to seek asylum or other protection. Under federal law, migrants under the age of 18 traveling without parents must be removed from custody of border guards to a children’s home supervised by the Department of Health and Human Services within three days of crossing the border.

Typically, the accommodations are licensed by government agencies and offer child-rearing, counseling and legal services. The children stay there while they begin their immigration cases and seek a guardian to take them in.

To keep up with the number of children who have been in HHS custody since Monday 22,195, according to the department, the administration has rushed to hire contractors and staff for the more than a dozen unlicensed shelters. About half of the children in HHS detention are in the shelters, where they sleep on cots and shower in mobile trailers.