Active Military Post Prepares to Detain Immigrant Children

By Aura Bogado Jun 12, 2014

A U.S. Army base outside of Oklahoma City, Okla., is preparing to detain undocumented minors who were recently apprehended crossing the southern border without a parent.

Fort Sill–an active base built during the Indian Wars in the late 1800s–will take between 600 and 1,200 minors. The children mostly arrived from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, often fleeing violence in hopes of reuniting with parents already in the United States. Many of the migrant children, usually referred to as unaccompanied minors, are girls under the age of 12.

The minors may be held at Fort Sill for up to four months, but it remains unclear what will happen to the children after that time. Equally unclear is whether the use of Fort Sill as a detention center for minors is temporary, or whether new child migrants will be placed there in the future. 

Oklahoma’s KSWO-7 has been reporting on the issue locally:

Fort Sill is the third military base that will hold undocumented minors. Texas’s Lackland Air Force Base and California Naval Base are already holding migrant youth.