PHOENIX - The Trump administration may be looking for sites for a tent city to house up to 5,000 children of undocumented immigrants.
The McClatchy news service reports Department of Homeland Security officials are considering three sites in Texas as possibilities. No decision has been made yet, however.
The Trump administration is looking for more space to house children after the Department of Justice implemented the "zero-tolerance" policy, requiring everyone caught crossing the border illegally to be charged and tried in court.
Children are being separated from their parents while their parents are in jail awaiting trial. While they're separated, the U.S. government is in charge of caring for them.
Normally, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services takes so-called "unaccompanied children" who cross the border without their parents, and places them in shelters across the country.
After a huge surge in unaccompanied children in 2014 that resulted in thousands of them being house in Border Patrol facilities that were basically converted warehouses, the federal government increased the number of permanent shelters.
However the new children needing housing are different in that they came across the border with their parents.
Separating those children from their parents has increased the number of children in HHS care by 20 percent in the one month the policy has been in effect. The shelters are reportedly at 95 percent capacity.
So we can verify, even if the tent city idea is ultimately scrapped, the Trump administration will have to find somewhere to place children being separated from their parents as the shelters fill up.