The Obama administration has announced that it will deport undocumented immigrants quicker and open a new detention center for families crossing the border.

The detention center, located on the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s Artesia, N.M., campus, will house families while their deportation proceedings are being completed.

“We will house them in facilities that are humane and compliant with legal requirements,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.

In 2009, the government reportedly shut down the main family detention center amid complaints about conditions there. Currently, the government only has about 100 beds to house families with children.

This fiscal year, some 39,000 people traveling as families have been apprehended, but the vast majority have been released, with many receiving ankle bracelets to monitor their movement.

However, the Obama administration’s plan will not address children traveling to the U.S. alone, a group that is treated differently under U.S. law. The chief reasons are a deeply flawed system of immigration courts and a 2002 law intended to protect children’s welfare.

“I am pleased to see that the administration is finally taking some steps to address the crisis caused by the flood of undocumented immigrants and unaccompanied children from Central America arriving at the Texas-Mexico border,” said Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas.

But other Democrats and immigrant advocates said it was wrong to put children into jail while awaiting their deportation hearing. About 52,000 children traveling by themselves have been apprehended since the fiscal year began last October.

The recent increase in child immigrants is politically damaging for Obama, who has pushed Congress to act on long-stalled proposals to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws.The president has made several administrative changes to immigration enforcement, including a program to allow some young immigrants who came to the country before 2007 to avoid deportation and obtain a work permit for two years.

Republican lawmakers have criticized Obama’s immigration policies and blamed the administration for what Obama described as a humanitarian issue at the border.