EXCLUSIVE: Biden Admin Put Migrant Kids’ Shelter On The Clock In Scramble For Space Amid Border Crisis, Emails Show

The Biden administration rushed to find room for more migrant children as the 2021 border surge overwhelmed its shelters, newly obtained emails show.

An Administration for Children and Families (ACF) official asked contractor Cherokee Federal on Aug. 5, 2021, to explain how it could expand capacity and COVID-19 quarantine space for unaccompanied migrant children at its Pomona, California, facility, according to records obtained by the Center to Advance Security in America (CASA) and shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General found in June 2022 that most of the emergency sites it inspected, which included Pomona, did not follow federal COVID testing guidance, partly because the government was expanding capacity so quickly.

‘The Urgency Of This Request’

The Biden-era official’s request, marked “Importance: High,” asked how quickly Cherokee Federal could add bunk beds and other structures, and how much COVID quarantine space the site had left, according to the email exchange in the CASA-obtained records.

“[W]hen do you estimate you’ll run out of COVID space?” an ACF official asked in the initial Aug. 5 email, according to the exchange depicted in the records. ACF is a division of HHS.

The Aug. 5 email included a response deadline of “Friday, July 5 2021,” a month before the email was sent.

The date was “likely a typographical error — adding to the chaos and confusion of this exchange,” CASA Director James Fitzpatrick told the DCNF.

“When read in the broader context of the conversation with the follow up extensions requested by Cherokee Federal, and the fact that July was in the past — all of the context leads to this being a request for an immediate next day reply,” Fitzpatrick added.

Cherokee Federal responded on Aug. 5 that it was still confirming pricing for beds, structures, and “the needs to increase the COVID numbers” and asked for “an extension until 6:00 pm PST Monday August 9, 2021,” the email exchange states.

Cherokee Federal did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.