By the late fall of 2017, the pilot program in El Paso was starting to attract more attention. A senior staffer at the Department of Health and Human Services noticed a pattern and emailed McAleenan, at CBP. Not only was the department running out of bed space for unaccompanied children in government shelters, he pointed out, but a significant share of the children entering HHS custody didn’t appear to be unaccompanied at all.
