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Rep. Manning raises questions about refugee center at former American Hebrew Academy

In this Feb. 19, 2019, file photo, children line up to enter a tent at the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)

U.S. Representative Kathy Manning has sent a letter to federal health officials with concerns about a planned refugee center in Greensboro.

The letter is directed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement. That's the agency that's leasing the former American Hebrew Academy to temporarily house unaccompanied minor children.

The plan is to use the vacant campus as a transition site for children until they can be reunited with their families.

The letter asks for details on security at the facility, how many children will reside there, their average length of stay, and how they will be provided with health services, among other issues.

Manning, D-6th, says she wrote the letter in response to questions from area residents.

“What I want to understand for my constituents is all the details of how this facility will be operated, what the impact will be on the community,” she says. “And how other facilities in other communities have operated and what the impact has been on those communities.”

Manning says she has asked for an in-person meeting with DHHS officials to address her concerns.

The agency did not reply to an email request seeking a response to Manning's letter.

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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