Small percentage of migrants processed by U.S. in 2021 had access to COVID-19 vaccines

Just a small percentage of the hundreds of thousands of migrants processed by the U.S. this year have received COVID-19 vaccinations while in federal custody, and half of them are unaccompanied children, according to unpublished government data obtained by CBS News.

Collectively, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have administered vaccine doses to more than 90,000 immigrants in deportation proceedings, the statistics show.

For months, however, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) declined to offer vaccines, leaving hundreds of thousands at risk of being unvaccinated when they were deported or released into the U.S. Since January, CBP has processed migrants along the southern border over 1.6 million times, agency data shows.