‘Bring the immigrant children.’ Miami Democrat Wilson pushes to reopen Homestead center

Miami Democratic Rep. Frederica Wilson favors reopening the Homestead Detention Center for migrant children, breaking with the majority of her party after activists and elected officials spent years protesting the center’s existence as a symbol of former President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.

In an interview Monday, Wilson said the Homestead facility could help handle an influx of unaccompanied immigrant children who have already overwhelmed existing facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border, causing some children to remain in Customs and Border Patrol custody for much longer than they’re supposed to. She also supports opening smaller facilities run by organizations like Catholic Charities in South Florida to house children who are primarily from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras as they wait to be placed with a sponsor or in foster care.

“We have a Democratic president and we as Democrats have to help him,” Wilson said, referring to President Joe Biden. “We can’t be having pity parties and commiserating over what’s happening at the border. We’ve got to come up with solutions to help him. It’s not only a defining moment in his administration but in immigration policy.”

Wilson first made public her desire to reopen Homestead in a tweet on Saturday, the only local Democrat to do so.

Her position is much different than the majority of South Florida Democrats, who in February decried the Biden administration’s plan to reopen the Homestead facility, which housed as many as 1,200 kids in 2019, making it the largest center for unaccompanied migrant children in the country.

And her tweet caused the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, which opposes reopening Homestead under any circumstance, to reiterate its position on Sunday.

“The Miami-Dade Dems remain steadfast in our opposition of the housing of immigrant minors in the Homestead Detention Center,” the local party said on Sunday.

On Monday, Wilson met with Miami-Dade Democrats Chairman Steve Simeonidis and local immigration activist Thomas Kennedy. Kennedy, who led protests outside the facility, pushed for alternatives to Homestead and suggested that alternative facilities could provide better conditions for migrant children.

“These children are in an untenable situation right now in Texas so it doesn’t have to be the Homestead Detention Center, but we’re going to put our heads together and come up with different housing opportunities in Dade County,” Wilson said. “We’re going to work with local contractors to get 90-day contracts from the federal government.”

The Homestead Detention Center became a must-stop for Democratic presidential hopefuls in 2019, with current Vice President Kamala Harris calling the facilities like Homestead a “human rights abuse.”

But Wilson said she’s confident that a Biden-run Department of Health and Human Services, which has the ultimate responsibility for migrant children after they are transferred from Border Patrol facilities run by the Department of Homeland Security, will do things differently than Trump, who barred reporters and lawmakers from visiting HHS-run facilities for months.

“You’re talking about two different administrations,” Wilson said. “There’s a big difference between Trump and Mr. [Stephen] Miller and Biden and Ms. Harris. They’re not going to have a provider there treating the children the way the Trump administration did.”

After months of outcry, the Homestead facility was eventually mothballed but not formally closed in August 2019 when all remaining children, who mostly lived in tents, were relocated amid a hurricane threat. Activists also opposed the facility because it sat next to multiple military sites that contained pollutants and that it was run by a for-profit contractor with ties to John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff.

Kennedy said he’s opposed to Biden running the facility with a for-profit contractor, in addition to concerns about the site’s safety from toxic pollution and hurricanes. The Biden administration hasn’t provided details to the public or members of Congress about how the facility will be run if it reopens.

“Our stance on this is very clear: We don’t want this facility to reopen because it’s next to a toxic military waste site, it symbolizes the worst Trump-era immigration policies — family separation, for example — and the for-profit component of this opens it up to all sorts of abuse of children,” Kennedy said.

The back-and-forth over reopening Homestead stems from a surge of immigrants at the border since Biden assumed office in January. While many unaccompanied migrant children are not being deported, the Biden administration continues to deport the majority of immigrant adults and families under a Trump-era policy called Title 42.

Wilson, along with South Florida Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Ted Deutch and Alcee Hastings, all oppose Biden’s continuing to deport families and adults who come to the U.S. seeking asylum, including thousands of Haitians. They sent a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urging him to change the policy.

“It’s really great that she signed that letter,” Kennedy said. “I don’t mean to say the congresswoman is a villain in this story. The border crisis is manufactured by Republicans who are trying to distract and sensationalize the issue, it’s a logistical problem but one we can figure out.”

Republicans, in contrast, are urging Biden to harden the U.S.-Mexico border and have argued his administration is failing to deal with the increase of immigrants there. Two of Miami’s three House Republicans, Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez, visited the border earlier this month with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. All of Miami’s Republicans in Congress, including Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, Sen. Marco Rubio and Sen. Rick Scott, favor reopening the Homestead facility to deal with the influx of migrant children.

Kennedy, who noted that Wilson’s position on Homestead is similar to Rubio’s, said Democrats should listen to immigration activists who argue that spending more money to locate and place immigrant children with sponsors faster is better than spending money on contractors to run facilities like Homestead. Wilson said she’s planning a call with HHS and White House officials to discuss reopening Homestead with local activists.

“Are we really grabbing them at the border and putting them into what could be a marginally better prison-like facility next to an [EPA] Superfund site?” Kennedy said. “C’mon, let’s be better than this.”

This story was originally published March 30, 2021 at 6:00 AM.