In and around a beige barracks on Lackland AFB, 200 children sleep on military-style cots, eat in an atmosphere similar to a school cafeteria, watch movies and play soccer on a small patch of dirt.
All this happens under the watchful eye of Baptist Family and Children's Services employees and off-duty San Antonio police officers.
A small group of reporters on Thursday got a look at the temporary shelter for immigrant children in a 60-year-old building at Lackland, only one of a handful of similar facilities across Texas that has been open to the media.
The children are part of an unexplained wave of kids detained by the Border Patrol, and in the last month authorities have opened temporary shelters to house them. The Lackland shelter opened two weeks ago.
The emergency shelter is one of five housing nearly 500 children who have appeared in the last month as the Border Patrol deals with an influx of unaccompanied children, said Jesus Garcia, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The department cares for children detained by Border Patrol and contracts shelter operations to BFCS. San Antonio's shelter is the only one on a military facility, Garcia said.
“We did (the tour) for transparency's sake,” he said. The children receive “the same services they would get in a private sector.”
Of the children HHS cares for, 88 percent end up with family members, Garcia said.
“What we always strive for is the children be held in the least restrictive setting possible and that they be held for the shortest time possible,” said, Wendy Young, executive director of Kids in Need of Defense, a nonprofit that finds legal representation for immigrant children.
Once they're placed with family members, sponsors try to provide counsel so the children can pursue legal status through options such as asylum and visas for victims of crime and neglect, she said.
All of the 200 children are 17 or younger, Garcia said. The youngest is 9. HHS generally takes custody of 7,000 to 8,000 children a year but had to find housing for 5,000 since October. Most are from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico.
Cameras weren't allowed on the tour.
Garcia said HHS has good reason for stringent security measures.
“The children, some of them are victims of crimes,” he said. “They escaped gangs. They were victims of human trafficking. So there is a risk that any image of them could become public, and these people that are looking for them could recognize them and know that they're in out custody.”
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