RALEIGH — The Greensboro Influx Care Facility (ICF) for unaccompanied minor children will be operational soon, per a post by Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan on the social media platform X.
“Today we were notified that the Greensboro Children’s Center will be operational on March 15th,” Vaughan wrote in a March 1 post. “This means the Greensboro Children’s Center will be ready to house children. It is important to note that no children will be placed at the facility at this time.”
Vaughan’s X post and formal statement follow a March 1 press release by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (DHS ORR) that says the agency “is working diligently with its interagency partners to ensure that unaccompanied migrant children are placed with vetted family members or other sponsors in the U.S. as quickly and safely as possible.”
The release includes a list of four “operating” influx care facilities, including the Greensboro location which is described as having no children on site and “no activation date.”
Vaughan’s formal statement echoed the one on social media, adding that, “ORR will notify stakeholders before children are placed at the ICF.”
Greensboro falls under the 6th Congressional District currently held by Democrat Rep. Kathy Manning, whose office is aware of the March 15 opening but also indicated that “children will not arrive on that date.”
Last December, North State Journal was turned away from the facility and guards at the entrance refused to answer any questions or provide access to staff in charge.
According to DHS ORR, the Greensboro ICF is intended to house, feed and educate up to 800 migrant children.
The Biden administration’s HHS signed a five-year contract for more than $49.7 million to begin on June 9, 2022, and end on July 8, 2027. It remains unclear why no children have yet been placed at the Greensboro ICF as the nearly $50 million contract quickly approached two years old and questions about the facility from North Carolina Congressional members to the Biden administration have yet to be answered.
Federal contract data lists the group hired to operate the facility as “Deployed Services” under a blanket purchase agreement from DHS for $139.4 million. The organization is headquartered in Rome, New York.
Despite no children being housed at the site, security and other personnel with Deployed Services have been on the property for at least a year. Following the contract award, employment ads for up to 800 workers to start work in July 2022 were allegedly placed by Deployed Services.
Earlier this year, North State Journal learned that the ownership of the Greensboro ICF property changed hands in early 2023 and that the companies have ties to China.
According to Guilford County real estate records, the $26 million loan documents for the American Hebrew Academy (AHA) campus, now called the Greensboro ICF, had been assigned from Puxin Ltd. to Metabroad International Group and Heyi Holdings in January 2023.
Records show Metabroad’s representative Wei Yang was the first to notarize his documents in Virginia on Dec. 27, 2022. Yang is also a former AHA board member.
The following month, loan change paperwork was executed by “Ling Tie” on behalf of Heyi Holdings in Honolulu on Jan. 6, 2023. Six days later, Puxin’s CFO Peng Wang certified his part of the contract at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.
