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Military Bases Could House Immigrants, But An 'Information Blackout' Is Keeping It Under Wraps

Aerial view of Fort Bliss
Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Aerial view of Fort Bliss

From Texas Standard.

Immigrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border could potentially be housed at military bases – including a few in Texas – according to a recent report. Questions are swirling about how exactly this will play out.

Sig Christenson, a military reporter for the San Antonio Express News, says it’s unknown what military bases are doing in preparation to house migrant children.

“You would think that these people [public officials] would be informed at some point the federal government or the army but so far nothing coming from either place – so we don’t know what preparations are being made for what they will do at Fort Bliss or Goodfellow,” he says.

Christenson says there are a few guesses at what the bases are doing to accommodate these children.

“There’s expectations that if they need soldiers to help out setting up the facilities, they might do that,” he says, “And of course on the medical side of it – Fort Bliss in particular has the William Beaumont Army Hospital – it’s a big hospital – they’re building a new one.”

This isn’t the first time military bases have been pressed to take action to house immigrants. Under President Obama, there were about 100 children housed at Lackland Air Force Base in Bexar County.

When speaking with an El Paso county judge, Christenson says the judge was told he would have to wait two weeks to visit a facility that would house migrant children and wasn’t given any other information about it.

“Rather interestingly, that judge said that when this stuff was going on under President Obama, they were getting far faster reactions from the federal government – and that doesn’t surprise me,” he says, “One of the hallmarks of this particular operation is a lack of information – it’s almost as if it’s an information blackout.”

Written by Amber Chavez.

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