The number of unaccompanied immigrant children housed at a temporary shelter at Naval Base Ventura County, Port Hueneme has grown to about 210 teenagers mostly from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, officials said.
Since the shelter opened June 6, nearly 70 13- to 17-year-olds have been discharged to either a family member or sponsor living in the United States until their immigration court hearing.
The base is home to one of three temporary shelters recently opened nationwide in response to an overwhelming increase of unaccompanied minors illegally crossing the southwest border. The number is expected to reach 60,000 this year.
As more children are brought to the shelter, where they can stay for up to four months, community members and local nonprofits have started to pool donations of basic needs goods and look for ways to volunteer their time.
It is unclear, however, whether the boxes of clothing and hygiene products will ever be permitted on the base.
“The federal agencies supporting these facilities are unable to accept donations or volunteers to assist the unaccompanied children program,” according to a statement on the Administration for Children and Families website.
The Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, oversees operations of the 42,000-square-foot shelter.
Texas-based Southwest Key Programs was contracted to staff and run the facility and is looking to fill hundreds of jobs at the Port Hueneme shelter, according to its website.
Officials expected the Port Hueneme shelter to reach its maximum capacity of 575 children as early as this week, but ACF spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said in an email it’s “a day-by-day situation as far as reporting numbers.
The Center for Employment Training in Oxnard has become a staging site for donations to be dropped off with the hope that they will eventually go to the children housed at the shelter.
Teresa Telles, director of the nonprofit’s Oxnard branch, said it has already collected more than 20 boxes and an even greater number of bags of hygiene products, clothing and school supplies.
Telles reached out to a private Facebook group with 235 members that has been trying to find a way to provide donations to the shelter and needed a central location to keep the items.
Jessica Flanagan, who lives in Ventura with her husband and 9-month-old daughter, started the Facebook group before the shelter opened.
“I’m just a regular person with a job and a kid at home that wanted to show some compassion for some kids that have traveled a really, really long way and have been through some stuff that I don’t think any of us could imagine,” she said.
Flanagan said she contacted Southwest Key and was initially told that donations were needed and more than welcome, so she rallied community members through social media to collect clothing, 250 individual hygiene kits and brand new sets of twin bed sheets, among other items.
“They asked for these things,” Flanagan said. “We’re just standing by and waiting to be called upon for action.”
Flanagan said she is hopeful the back-and-forth will soon end and the donations will be accepted.
“If they can’t accept donations, maybe they can identify a charity that is affiliated with Southwest Key that can accept them and funnel it through to the kids that way,” she said. “These kids are in our backyard; they’re in our community. We need to make sure they’re being treated well.”
Southwest Key is now directing media calls to the Administration for Children and Families.
The Center for Employment Training in Oxnard will continue accepting donations weekdays between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. at the front desk of the office at 761 S. C Street.