Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. It's Thursday, February 25th. I'm Nila Boone. Here's

what you need to know today. Some good news about COVID and nursing homes. Plus, a turning

point in how cities select police chiefs. But first, an Axios exclusive is our one big

thing. How the Biden administration is housing migrant kids.

More than 700 unaccompanied children were in border patrol custody as of Sunday morning.

That's according to an internal customs and border protection document obtained by

Axios. Political reporter Steph Kite is here with the exclusive staff. What's in these documents?

So these documents show that a lot of these kids have been staying in these border patrol

facilities for more than 48 hours. And nine of them had been in those facilities for more

than 72 hours. And they're supposed to be a limit of not having kids in these facilities

for more than 72 hours. When kids cross the border without their parents, they're supposed

to be sent to shelters that are run by HHS. They're not supposed to stay in border patrol

custody for very long. We heard White House press secretary Jen Saki yesterday talking

about this. We have a number of unaccompanied minors, children who are coming into the country

without their families. We have a couple of options. We can send them back home and do

a dangerous journey back. We can quickly transfer them from CBP to these HHS run facilities.

That's one option. Or we can put them with families and sponsors without any vetting.

We've chosen the middle option. So does this document show that the middle option is what's

happening? Are these children being quickly transferred?

There are a few different factors at play here. One is that there was the emergency weather

situation in Texas. And I spoke with an HHS official who told me that that did affect

their ability to both take in kids and release kids to sponsors who are in the US. So that's

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