DALLAS COUNTY TO HOUSE 2,000 IMMIGRANT CHILDREN

The Associated Press Judge Clay Jenkins says as many as 2,000 unaccompanied immigrant children could be transported from the Texas-Mexico border to three temporary housing facilities in Dallas County by the end of next month.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said youngsters would move from facilities in McAllen to his county. The plan is to have each spend about three weeks there, before being placed with relatives around the U.S.

Dallas Independent School District has closed school campuses in the past two years. The district offered campusesto house the children, including The Billy Earl Dade Annex in South Dallas, Harllee Elementary in Oak Cliff, and Hulcy Middle in Red Bird, locations that will temporarily house 2,000 immigrant children.

Jenkins said the first county temporary housing facility is already being prepared, and that officials are working with federal authorities to find two more by late July.

The county is approaching this as a humanitarian emergency and will use all the tools at its disposal to ensure the health and safety of these kids and the public. That includes the Dallas County Sheriff’s Office, the Dallas County Health and Human Services, and Parkland Hospital.

A surge of immigrant families, mostly from Central America, has overwhelmed federal authorities. Jenkins said immigration politics aside, Dallas County wants to help children who are “scared and trapped in not good conditions on the border.”

President Barack Obama will seek more than $2 billion to respond to the flood of immigrants illegally entering the U.S. through the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas and ask for new powers to deal with returning immigrant children apprehended while traveling without their parents.

With Obama looking to Congress for help with what he has called an “urgent humanitarian situation,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi visited a Border Patrol facility in Brownsville that held unaccompanied children. More than 52,000 unaccompanied children, most from Central America, have been apprehended entering the U.S. illegally since October.