122,000 Unaccompanied Minor Migrants Arrived in The US in 2021

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported that 122,000 unaccompanied migrant minors arrived in the United States in FY 2021, a record number since 2019 when authorities registered the entry of 69,000 minors traveling without their parents.

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This increase in the migratory flow implied an unprecedented challenge according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“These children... are transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement… and remain in shelters until relatives are found to take them under their care. A few weeks before the inauguration of Biden in January, the shelters of the Health Department reached their full capacity and the new government set up more than a dozen convention centers, military facilities and camps to house the minor migrants,” outlet Real America News recalled.

“Numerous groups that advocate for migrants denounced the conditions in some of these juvenile accommodation centers, and asked the Government to speed up the procedures to dispose of the children and close those facilities,” it added.

Given that the number of unaccompanied minors could increase in 2022, U.S. authorities are already preparing several emergency facilities in the states of New Mexico and North Carolina.

On Wednesday, Pope Francis affirmed that the contemporary treatment of migratory flows is "a social scandal of humanity" to which "we cannot close our eyes."

Migrants are victims of "the arrogance and violence of the powerful," he said and asked for a prayer for all those who are forced by political violence and wars to flee their countries.