A federal facility in North Carolina is set to house migrant children. What do we know?

When children enter the United States without permission and without the care of a parent or guardian, Greensboro is one place they might now call home.

At least temporarily.

Officials with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced in March that the Greensboro Children’s Center, located in the northwest portion of the city, is ready to house these unaccompanied minors while U.S. officials locate sponsors for them.

As they manage the higher numbers of children crossing the border and ending up in shelter centers run by HHS, federal officials have opened several new centers, known as influx care facilities. Those, including the Greensboro center, will operate as overflow facilities when other shelters run out of room.

But a bipartisan group of elected officials say HHS officials have been less than transparent in opening the Greensboro location.

For two years, North Carolina Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Thom Tillis and Rep. Richard Hudson, have asked HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra to answer questions about how the agency chose Greensboro, what other contractors are involved in the facility’s operations, what services will be provided, how HHS plans to ensure the safety of the minors and the community and the impact on the local community.

“They consistently don’t respond to tough questions,” Tillis told McClatchy.

An HHS spokesperson sent a written statement to McClatchy stating that the agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) made all required notifications to national, state and local elected officials.

“In addition, we have regularly engaged with local and state government and elected officials, as well as community stakeholders to keep them informed and maintain a collaborative relationship, including sending a courtesy notification two weeks before the site became operational.”

HHS also noted that all information regarding government contracts are public record. The contractors working with HHS at the Greensboro site include Deployed Services, Chenega Naswik International LLC and Deployed Resources.

WGHP in High Point reported that Deployed Services will provide health care, education, case workers and dormitory monitoring at the facility. Deployed Resources has a contract to manage the facility. It’s not clear what Chenega Naswik is contracted to do, though the company provides security at other facilities.

History of abuse?

Becca Asaki is the director of organizing at Tsuru for Solidarity, an organization created by Japanese American and Japanese Latin American World War II concentration camp survivors and descendants looking to end detention sites and support affected immigrants. She said the facilities being used to house children have a history of abuse.

“Most famously, in sites like Fort Bliss, Texas, we had numerous whistleblowers come forward, to share abuses that were happening inside,” Asaki said. “Everything from young people being fed rotten food to physical and sexual abuse.”

The HHS site located at Fort Bliss, a base in El Paso, Texas, has the capacity to house up to 10,000 teenagers in a tent facility. The whistleblowers reported filthy living conditions, dirty clothing and bedding, sexual harassment by on-site construction workers and threats of deportation if the children acted out.

A 67-page report by the National Center for Youth Law details through interviews with children what they experienced at Fort Bliss and other facilities.

Audio leaked to NBC includes allegations of sexual abuse at Fort Bliss.

Elected officials want information

The lack of meaningful responses from the Biden administration to their inquiries about the Greensboro facility has left lawmakers like Tillis feeling uneasy about the new facility.

“I just don’t think they should be under the radar, because in some respects, I think they’re trying to mask just how critical the problem is, that they’re having to find detention facilities thousands of miles away from where they came across the border,” Tillis said.

He said HHS has not been responsive to elected officials, which raises questions about the safety of the areas where the centers are located.

Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan, a Democrat, told McClatchy that it has been a frustrating two years knowing that this facility was opening, but not having good answers to offer the community’s residents about what to expect.

“They have not been as forthcoming with information as elected officials would like, because I feel like we are standing in the gap between the residents and this facility and we have not had constant information,” Vaughan said.

Vaughan said she’s gleaned some information from meetings with HHS and weekly phone calls the agency offers for city and county staff, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions.

Here’s what McClatchy was able to gather from interviews and publicly available documents.

What is an influx center?

ORR runs 289 programs in 29 states to help refugees, unaccompanied minors and Cuban and Haitian immigrants. Some are refugees and some are seeking asylum, while others are survivors of torture or trafficking.

When an unaccompanied minor enters the United States, immigration officials refer them to HHS to care for the child until a sponsor can be identified and take over.

During the last fiscal year, 113,495 children came through the Unaccompanied Children (UC) program and were placed with a sponsor. That is in line with the totals from the previous two years, but higher than in any of the six years before that, according to ORR data.

HHS said it is a priority to place children into the care of one of its main facilities for minors and that it places children at influx care facilities, which are meant to be set up identically, when needed due to the number of children being referred from immigration authorities and the capacity of other facilities to house them. The spokesperson added that influx care centers ensure ORR can accept all children referred by immigration officials promptly, allowing children not to spend more time than necessary at border patrol stations.

Where are the other influx centers?

There are two others, both located in Texas. A third facility in Texas closed after September 2023.

Where is the North Carolina facility located?

On land off Hobbs Road in Greensboro.

For 18 years, the 100-acre site was home to The American Hebrew Academy, an international boarding school. Nearly half the student body came from 35 different countries. It closed in 2019.

The American Hebrew Academy is leasing its facility to HHS for use.

How was Greensboro selected?

That is not clear.

HHS officials seemingly have not worked with any federal, state or local elected officials to find the facility.

Vaughan said she believes that someone with the school, a privately owned institution, contacted the federal government to offer it for use.

How did lawmakers learn about the influx center?

In May 2021, elected officials learned that HHS employees were on the property and considering it for the influx center.

Hudson said that he first learned about the influx center from people living in Greensboro who called his office. Some reported a military plane with U.S. markings on it parked at the Greensboro airport. Others told Hudson that there were HHS workers in town talking about opening the influx center at the American Hebrew Academy.

“I was getting information from citizens as it was happening,” Hudson said.

At a hearing that same month, knowing about the field work underway at the site, Hudson asked Becerra under oath if there were plans to operate a facility in North Carolina for unaccompanied migrant children.

“There is no plan that we have to shelter children in North Carolina,” Becerra answered during the hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We are always looking for sites where we can provide the type of safety and security that children need, and we have sites throughout the country, but there is no plan I can tell you right now to shelter children in North Carolina.”

Hudson told McClatchy he believes Becerra lied to him. Becerra testified before the committee again in July 2023, and Hudson confronted him about his previous testimony.

“When he testified before our committee I asked him under oath, was he being clever to hide the truth or was he straight up lying to me, and we still haven’t gotten a straight answer,” Hudson told McClatchy.

Tillis said if it weren’t for the local residents, lawmakers would have never learned about the facility.

Vaughan said she didn’t learn about it until city and county employees were invited to the facility to learn what was about to happen there, including about the logistics of hiring people and who would be housed there.

Did HHS provide information to lawmakers?

An HHS spokesperson said that ORR held multiple community stakeholder meetings virtually and in Greensboro, including one the last week of March, to share information about the Unaccompanied Children program, provide details on the new site and answer questions.

HHS said the meetings included state and local elected officials, county and city administrators, local religious organizations, local advocacy groups and the neighborhood property board.

“ORR meets biweekly with Guilford County Office of Emergency Management, state and city officials to provide updates and address questions and concerns,” the spokesperson wrote.

Vaughan confirmed that there were biweekly meetings with city and county officials.

What is an unaccompanied minor?

The federal government defines an unaccompanied child as a person under 18 years old with no lawful immigration status and no parent or legal guardian — or one who can provide care or physical custody — within the United States.

Where are the children from?

The majority of the children in federal custody under the Unaccompanied Children program are from Guatemala and Honduras.

How many unaccompanied children are in the program?

As of March 29, there were nearly 7,800 children in federal custody. That’s down nearly 540 children from the previous week.

How many children will be housed in Greensboro?

That’s not clear. The number is dependent on the need and can fluctuate. The facility can hold up to 1,100 beds, according to a memo from HHS.

The facility is meant to be used only in the event that other facilities run out of space.

How old are the children who will be housed in Greensboro?

Greensboro is specifically set up to house boys and girls from 13 to 17 years old. In 2024, over 76% of children in the program were over 14 and 61% were male, according to a UC program fact sheet.

What is offered to the children at these facilities?

Besides education and health services, children have access to case management, recreation, unification services and pro-bono legal services, the performance work statement said.

Do the children attend local schools?

No. Children receive classroom education, on site, six hours a day, five days per week.

How long do children remain in UC programs?

Typically around 27 days. ORR officials said they hope to reduce the length of the stay.

“Once ORR identifies a safe, vetted sponsor, who has undergone a robust screening process, we have a responsibility to place the child as quickly as possible,” an HHS spokesperson said.

A legal settlement in 1997 between Jenny Flores and the federal government states that a child can’t be detained for longer than 20 days. Flores, a teenager, sued after being held in Pasadena, California, for more than two months and repeatedly strip searched after fleeing El Salvador’s civil war.

Asaki said some children are staying for much longer than 27 days and “languishing” for many months.

Do the children have access to resources outside the facility?

The performance work assessment says each child is told when they come on the campus about phones set up for them to use with complete privacy. The phones have pre-programmed numbers for the Undocumented Children Sexual Abuse Hotline, Child Protective Services, local community service providers and the National Rape Crisis Hotline. But to avoid stigma for those who use the phone, it also has phone numbers to contact lawyers and other needed services so that no one makes an automatic assumption about why a child used the phone.

What does a sponsor do?

Aside from the normal care of a child, the sponsor is responsible for ensuring the child always makes it to their immigration hearings. In the event of deportation, they must agree to take the child to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Who sponsors the children?

Officials begin trying to find someone in the United States who can sponsor the child as soon as they enter the program. Typically the child is sponsored by a parent or close relative.

Sponsors go through thorough background checks and assessments to ensure the safety of the child.

Hudson said he wants more answers from HHS about the systems in place to ensure children go to a safe location and whether HHS follows up to make sure the child is safe once they go to live with a sponsor.

“I have a lot of concerns about the safety of these children,” Hudson said.

How is Greensboro affected?

Vaughan said the facility plans to hire around 800 employees to work security and in food services, maintenance, lawn care, housekeeping, medical staff and case work.

Officials have heard complaints from neighbors that these employees would be parking in their neighborhood, taking away parking spots near their homes or clogging up the roads.

To combat that, Vaughan said ORR has contracted with an offsite parking lot for workers and is shuttling employees back and forth.

Vaughan said neighbors often confuse young workers with backpacks getting off buses with migrant children they think are being dropped off at the facility, forcing the city to combat misinformation.

There’s also been role-playing at the site to prepare workers for how to handle different scenarios that may arise. That has also led people to believe children are already on campus.

Vaughan said in the past several weeks, communications have increased between HHS and the city, and they have said they would let city officials know before migrant children arrive in Greensboro.

Is any local taxpayer money being used?

Vaughan said she was assured by federal officials that local tax dollars would not be used. The facility has its own medical services and should not need to use the local hospital.

Vaughan said she was assured that if something happens to require the use of local taxpayer funding, the federal government will reimburse the money.

She added that city employees have been working at the site for engineering, safety and fire code inspections and she does not believe that will be reimbursed.

Is a child released into the community once they’re out of the program?

Vaughan said she was told that when a child is assigned a sponsor, someone travels with the child at all times until they reach the sponsor.

Since October, 1,108 migrant children have been released to sponsors living in North Carolina. They live in Durham, Guilford, Mecklenburg, Wake and Wayne counties, with the majority living in Mecklenburg.