By Arul Louis New York, March 18 : In what amounts to an open-door policy for minors, they can enter the US without visas through the Mexican border and be allowed to stay with relatives or other sponsors. President Joe Biden's spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Wednesday that minors will continue to be allowed into the US and permitted to stay, reversing the policy under former President Donald Trump to send them back to Mexico. The minors below the age of 17, who are classified as "unaccompanied children", will have to enter the US by themselves to qualify. Asked by a reporter if there was going to be a limit on the number of minors 17 years and under admitted to the US, Psaki said: "We're not going to send a 10-year-old back across the border. That was the policy of the last administration. That's not our policy here. "We are taking steps to ensure that when kids come to the border, we look and see if they have a phone number in their pocket so we can call the family member and get them to those family members as quickly as possible." Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had made the policy clear when he said on Tuesday: "We are expelling most single adults and families. We are not expelling unaccompanied children. "We are encountering six- and seven-year-old children, for example, arriving at our border without an adult." He said that families facing "acute vulnerability" are also allowed to stay. saki and Mayorkas are sending a mixed message: Biden has appealed to everyone not to come to the US, but at the same time they are announcing that the administration is making an exception for children arriving by themselves at the border assuring them of entry giving them an incentive to come to the US. The US is facing an unprecedented surge of migrants trying to enter the country in hopes, or because of misinformation, that Biden will allow them in after having criticised Trump's policies to strictly implement immigration laws. Mayorkas said that his "Department is responding to historic and unprecedented challenges at the border, including the arrival of record levels of unaccompanied children". Citing sources, CBS TV reported that more than 13,000 children travelling alone are currently in "US custody". Mayorkas said that when the children are brought to Border Patrol facilities, they are processed and transferred to the Department of Health and Human Servis (HHS) within 72 hours. But he admitted that because of the large number of children, his Department has not always been able meet that deadline. He said that in more than 80 per cent of cases, the children have a family member in the US and in more than half of those cases it is a parent or legal guardian. The facilities to hold the children are inadquate and they face hardships. Describing the conditions there, Neha Desai, an Indian-American lawyer told CBS TV that some of the children said they were hungry, "they had to take turns sleeping on the floor" and the only time they could see the sun was when they were allowed to take showers, sometimes only once every seven days. Desai is one of two lawyers authorised by a court to monitor the conditions under which children are detained by immigration officials. The HHS said that when it receives the children, they are put in the care of the Officer of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and contact is made with their parents, guardians or relatives and the process of finding a suitable sponsor begins. "While ORR programs are looking for sponsors, children are provided age-appropriate care and wraparound services in one of the approximately 200 state-licensed facilities and programs in 22 states funded by ORR," it said. Most of the children coming in are children or relatives of those who had entered the US earlier and are unable to sponsor them for visas or green cards. In some cases parents also send them over in the belief that once the children are established in the US, they will be able to sponsor them. (Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter at @arulouis) /IANS