The Health 202: Now unaccompanied migrant kids are Xavier Becerra’s responsibility

And just as in 2019, the agency is struggling to move the children quickly out of crowded border centers.

The agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is charged with caring for kids who arrive at the border without a parent or guardian, had about 11,350 children in its care as of Tuesday, according to a spokesperson. That’s up from 7,700 children at the end of February.

So many minors are arriving so quickly, their numbers are expected to set an all-time high of more than 17,000 this month, my colleagues Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti report. That’s several thousand more kids than were in HHS custody when then-Secretary Alex Azar declared in 2019 that facilities to house the kids were full.

“The influx has overwhelmed the government’s ability to safely shelter and care for the minors before delivering them to family members and vetted sponsors living in the United States, a challenge complicated by the coronavirus pandemic,” Nick and Maria write.

These centers are supposed to hold unaccompanied children for no longer than 72 hours before sending them to shelters that contract with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to provide kids with housing, food, education and recreation. But hundreds of kids are spending more than three days without the specialized care they’re guaranteed under the law. 

The shelters are nearly 100 percent full, leaving 5,000 minors stranded in Border Patrol facilities or tent facilities not intended for children, Nick and Maria report. Teens and children have been waiting for transfer to Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters for 136 hours on average, nearly twice the legal limit.

The problem stems in part from the Biden administration’s policy of not expelling unaccompanied children who arrive at the border. White House officials and immigrant advocates have argued it’s fair and humane to allow the kids to remain on U.S. soil — but that approach also requires more room to house them until they can be turned over to a parent or relative.

“There is a humanitarian situation at the border now with children being held for longer than 72 hours at these border facilities,” said Lee Gelernt, an immigration attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “I do think they are going to have to work very hard to fix it quickly as possible.”

In 2019, Becerra accused the administration of holding kids in these centers “without sufficient food, health or even medical care.”

“Children have been forced to go without basic hygiene products that we all take for granted like soap and toothbrushes and they are being held in these conditions for much longer than is ever necessary,” he said at the time. “The actions by this administration aren’t just morally reprehensible … they’re illegal.”

But kids are being held in crowded, makeshift facilities right now. Photos of a temporary overflow shelter in Donna, Tex., released by Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) show those in custody lying on side-by-side mattresses. Cuellar called the center “terrible conditions for the children.”

The Biden administration is allowing reporters little access to the border facilities.

Until yesterday, officials hadn’t allowed media to visit any of the overcrowded centers, leading to a bipartisan outcry for more transparency.

Finally on Wednesday, the White House allowed one camera inside a facility in Carrizo Springs, Tex., during a visit by a delegation of senior White House officials and members of Congress. But reporters noted that facility has more hospitable conditions than other centers, which are still closed to press.

Nick Miroff, immigration reporter for The Post:

Hamed Aleaziz, immigration reporter for BuzzFeed News:

Pressed on the issue at yesterday’s White House press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration is open to allowing reporters into other facilities as well. “This is just the first step in a process of providing greater access to the media,” she said.

The administration will use the Freeman Expo Center in San Antonio as temporary housing, CBS News reported yesterday. 

Camilo Montoya-Galvez, immigration reporter for CBS News:

HHS is also tapping the San Diego Convention Center and the Target Lodge in Pecos, Tex., to be turned into temporary shelters. About 1,500 unaccompanied children are already being held at the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center in Dallas. 

Gelernt said the ACLU doesn’t view these facilities as “permissible” for medium- or longer-term care of children, adding that the children will need to be moved into more suitable housing “very quickly.” Asked whether it’s okay to hold children in these temporary shelters for short periods, he said the ACLU will “evaluate each temporary facility on its own.”

“If we see the facilities are not up to standard … I think we will push back very hard,” he said.

“The finding, only slightly lower than results announced days earlier, underscores that the vaccine being widely used by many countries appears to be a powerful tool to help end the pandemic,” Carolyn writes. “No severe cases of illness were reported in study volunteers who received the vaccine. Among people 65 and older, the vaccine was 85 percent effective, the company reported.”

“The new data may not resolve challenges that the vaccine and the company face in the United States, because repeated missteps have sown confusion and distrust that may result in slower and closer scrutiny of the data,” she adds.

GlaxoSmithKline, the majority shareholder of Galvani Bioelectronics and where Slaoui long led vaccine development, announced that it had terminated Slaoui following an investigation into an allegation of sexual harassment.

The pharmaceutical giant said that the investigation, which was triggered by a letter sent last month, substantiated the allegations and is ongoing. The company said that the alleged misconduct occurred several years ago and was aimed at another employee of the pharmaceutical giant.

“As the coronavirus pandemic swept through New York early last year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration arranged for his family members and other well-connected figures to have special access to state-administered coronavirus tests, dispatching a top state doctor and other state health officials to their homes, according to three people with direct knowledge of the effort,” The Post’s Josh Dawsey, Amy Brittain and Sarah Ellison report.

The state lab immediately processed the results of those tested, even as average New Yorkers were struggling to get tested because of scarce resources in the early days of the pandemic, the people told The Post.

“New York law prohibits state officials from using their positions to secure privileges for themselves or others,” our colleagues write. “The revelation of the testing program comes as the Cuomo administration is battling controversies on multiple fronts, including an investigation by the state attorney general into allegations of sexual harassment by the governor, which he has denied, and a federal inquiry into the state’s reporting of the covid-19-linked deaths of nursing home residents.”

Chris Cuomo, a CNN anchor and the governor’s brother, was among those who benefited from the program after a state doctor visited his Hamptons home to collect saliva samples. He was diagnosed with covid-19 in late March 2020.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowksi (R-Alaska) crossed the aisle to join Democrats and independents in supporting Levine.

The Biden administration has said that Levine will play a key role in the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. She most recently served as Pennsylvania’s top health official.

“Her candidacy was widely opposed by religious rights groups, and some Republican critics also zeroed in on gaps in Pennsylvania’s nursing home data that they said complicated the state’s response to the pandemic,” Dan and Samantha report.

LGBTQ advocacy organizations applauded the confirmation. Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said that it would bring the country “one step closer to a government that mirrors the beautiful diversity of its people.”

The first federal data on education during the pandemic finds that White children are far more likely than Black or Asian American students to be attending school in person, The Post’s Laura Meckler reports.

The survey results suggest that Biden is close to achieving his goal of having a majority of K-8 schools open for full-time in-person classes by his 100th day in office, at the end of April. But the results also show that the country is a long way away from returning to normal.

Overall, the survey found that 47 percent of schools serving fourth-graders and 46 percent serving eighth-graders were open for full in-person instruction. But millions of students either don’t have access to full-time in-person school or are opting for remote education. Overall, 60 percent of fourth-graders and 68 percent of eighth-graders were learning at home for at least part of the week, under either fully remote or hybrid models.

“The survey also raised questions about the quality of education being delivered to those learning from home. About one-third of schools offer two hours or less of live instruction per day for those learning either full or part time at home. Some offer none,” Laura writes.

Lawmakers could vote on a stand-alone bill as soon as next week after state legislative leaders brokered a deal with Cuomo to legalize and tax cannabis for adults 21 years and older. The governor’s office estimates that the program could pull in $350 million a year in tax revenue, Bloomberg News’s Keshia Clukey reports. 

If approved, New York would join a growing number of states to legalize recreational marijuana, including neighboring New Jersey, which voted to legalize marijuana for recreational use last year.

But that spirit of leniency has not yet reached the White House.

Last week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that the White House had fired five staffers at least in part because of their past marijuana use. 

But Psaki was evasive when the New York Post asked why they were firing staff members when Vice President Harris has talked openly about her past marijuana use. 

While marijuana is legal in a number of states, Psaski said, “it is still illegal federally.”

Former president Barack Obama has also been open about using marijuana during his youth. Obama’s group of friends in high school even nicknamed themselves the “Choom Gang” after a slang term for smoking weed.