When unaccompanied migrant children are encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processes them and hands them off to the Health and Human Services Department’s (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement, which manages a network of shelters around the country. HHS tries to get the children out of these shelters, and placed with U.S.-based relatives (often parents) or other sponsors, as quickly as its procedures allow.
In a sign that migration is ticking up despite the approach of winter, the number of unaccompanied kids in HHS shelters exceeded 10,000 on November 22 (Tuesday), for the first time since August 4.
The data are downloadable from HHS as a comma-separated values (CSV) file.