(AP) — President Joe Biden’s administration is instructing long-term facilities that hold immigrant children to lift capacity restrictions enacted during the coronavirus pandemic.
The administration is looking to open up much-needed beds in a system facing sharply increased needs. A memo issued Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tells service providers to “temporarily increase capacity to full licensed capacity … while implementing and adhering to strict COVID-19 mitigation measures.” It’s not immediately clear how many beds will come available beyond the roughly 7,000 that were online last month.