Migrant teen tent city staying open into 2019

Associated Press

The Trump administration said Wednesday it will keep open through early 2019 a tent city in Texas that now holds more than 2,000 migrant teenagers, and also will increase the number of beds at another temporary detention center for children in Florida.

The Tornillo facility opened in June in an isolated corner of the Texas desert with capacity for up to 360 children. It eventually grew into a highly guarded detention camp where, on Christmas, some 2,300 largely Central American boys and girls between age 13 and 17 slept in more than 150 canvas tents.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman Mark Weber said Tornillo, which originally was slated to close Monday, has stopped receiving new referrals of migrant youth.

Tornillo will now shut down after the new year, Weber said, but he did not give an exact date or more precise time frame for when it might close for good.