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As a result, the administration is relying on controversial practices of past presidents — housing unaccompanied minors in temporary detention facilities, applying a Trump-era pandemic rule to rapidly expel migrants at the border without due process — even as officials quietly try to draw up new policies to handle migrants at the Southern border that are a break from the past.

Biden officials have provided scant details, however, on how, exactly, they plan to tackle the problems on the border that bedeviled their predecessors.

“It’s one thing to make promises. It’s another thing to execute on those promises,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of the advocacy group America’s Voice.

Sharry added that the Biden administration must do a better job of communicating “the landmines that were left [by former President Donald Trump], the disaster they’re trying to clean up and the time it’ll take to do that” to avoid widespread confusion, Sharry said.

“When people don’t know, they get frustrated and they get more antagonistic. And that’s not a good dynamic,” he said.

Some advocates, former U.S. officials and immigration experts recognize that Biden could be holding back details of his future plans to avoid triggering large numbers of migrants heading to the U.S.-Mexico border. That could create a situation along the border that the government is currently unprepared to handle.

“The Biden administration is picking up from a Trump administration that didn’t plan. Their only plan was to keep people out,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Department of Homeland Security official.

“We constantly are planning for a response to the last thing rather than thinking ahead to the next thing,” Brown said. “The crisis is not necessarily ‘oh my God, the numbers of migrants.’ The crisis is that we have not done the work necessary to think” and plan ahead, she said.

‘A DIFFICULT CHOICE’ ON UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN

The Biden administration on Monday reopened a detention facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, amid a growing number of migrant teenagers crossing the border unaccompanied by a parent — news that quickly sparked outrage with critics quickly tying it back to the Trump-era “kids in cages.” The facility, used by the Trump administration in 2019, was the source of much protest and criticism from Democrats, advocates and immigration attorneys.

But the facility is not reopening under the same conditions or for the same reasons as it was used under the Trump administration, Biden officials said. They opened the temporary facility because permanent shelters, run by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, are currently filling up as they’re running at about half capacity due to pandemic protocols.

The facility is not the same as those run by Customs and Border Protection. Federal law dictates that unaccompanied children arriving at the border, must be transported out of CBP facilities within 72 hours (although it often surpasses that timeframe). From there, they’re placed in an HHS-run shelter — which is still considered by advocates and attorneys to be unsuitable for children — until they’re matched with a vetted sponsor.

Still, this week, the Biden administration caught flak from progressives for taking unaccompanied migrant children to detention facilities. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed the Biden administration Tuesday night, tweeting, “This is not okay, never has been okay, never will be okay — no matter the administration or party.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday defended the administration’s handling of migrant children arrivals. She explained Biden is focused on quickly placing children with vetted families. But in the meantime, she said, the HHS facilities have been revamped and have medical and educational services available. Under Trump, the U.S. government focused its efforts on stopping immigration and keeping migrants out, not addressing conditions of migrant detention.

“We have kids coming across the border. It is heartbreaking… we only have a couple of choices. What we are not doing is dividing these kids and separating them from their parents at the border,” Psaki said. “This is a difficult situation. It’s a difficult choice. That’s the choice we’ve made.”

In January, more than 5,700 children arrived at the border alone, according to CBP figures. Federal officials are bracing for more arrivals while shelters for children are already more than 90 percent full under pandemic capacity limits. The Miami Herald reported there are plans to reopen a detention center in Homestead, Fla, that was previously run by a for-profit company.

The Biden administration has not publicly discussed a future alternative to handle the influx of unaccompanied children at the border. For now, Biden officials have settled on not expelling them from the country, but they’ve offered few details on how they will do things differently in the future.