Thousands of 15- to 17-year-old undocumented migrants who came over the border will be housed at the Dallas convention center as the volume of migrants coming across the southern border hits a two-year high, the Associated Press reports.

The teens, who came across the border unaccompanied by a parent or legal guardian, are stressing the available resources of the Department of Health and Human Services, which takes guardianship of minors who come across the border alone.  The Border Patrol is supposed to turn children over to HHS for placement with a US-residing relative or assignment to a foster home within three days.

The Dallas convention center will be a “decompression center” for the next 90 days.  Currently, around 1,000 children, some as young as four years old, are being housed in a tent encampment in Donna, Texas, 500 miles south of Dallas, is inadequate for the population it’s currently handling.

According to the AP:  “Lawyers who inspect immigrant detention facilities under a court settlement say they interviewed children who reported being held in packed conditions in the tent, with some sleeping on the floor and others not able to shower for five days.”

“I am incredibly proud of the agents of the Border Patrol, who have been working around the clock in difficult circumstances to take care of children temporarily in our care,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “Yet, as I have said many times, a Border Patrol facility is no place for a child.”

By law, the United States government must hold a hearing for any migrant on US soil who seeks asylum.  The Trump administration instituted a policy that forcibly separated children from their parents or guardian when they crossed the border, a program that left thousands of children in the United States after their parents had been deported to their home nations.  Currently, there are approximately 450 children who have not been reunited with their parents.