Watchdog report details distress among migrant children who languished at Fort Bliss facility

Migrant children housed by the U.S. government at a makeshift shelter inside an Army base in the Texas desert suffered distress and panic attacks last year because officials lacked the resources and training to release them in a timely and safe fashion, an internal investigation released Tuesday found.

Inexperienced and untrained federal employees and contractors assigned to a child migrant housing site inside Fort Bliss were ill-equipped to place thousands of unaccompanied Central American children with family members in the U.S., prolonging their stay at the Army base, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General concluded after a year-long review.

The Biden administration's hurried efforts to house the record number of unaccompanied minors who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border last year, the inspector general said, led HHS to hire individuals "who lacked knowledge about child-welfare best practices" as case managers to vet potential sponsors for children.