ORANGE BEACH, AL – The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is considering two Navy airfield sites in Baldwin County to house unaccompanied children crossing the Mexican border into the United States, according to a post by Baldwin County Commissioner Chris Elliott.

The sites are at Naval Outlying Field Wolf in Orange Beach and Naval Outlying field Silverhill in Silverhill.

The Orange Beach location is located directly north of the Caswell and Bear Point areas of the town on the north side of Bay La Launch closer to Josephine.

According to the website Abandoned and Little Known Airfields: Alabama, about Wolf field says: This airfield was built as one of the large number of WW2-era satellite airfields used by NAS Pensacola. The date of construction of Wolf is unknown, but it was built prior to 1945. The earliest reference to the field which has been located was on the 1945 Mobile Sectional Chart.

The website gives the exact description of the Silverhill airfield. It is located south of County Road 54 and north of Alabama 104 and west of River Road South to the west of the town center.

U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, responded to the possibility in an email to media outlets:

“The Obama Administration has once again shown an interest in potentially using Alabama’s military installations as temporary housing for illegal immigrants," Shelby's release said. "These Department of Defense properties should be used for those men and women working to keep our nation safe – not to house illegal immigrants.

“President Obama’s blatant disregard for our immigration laws has led us to this point, and we must not allow his actions to burden our nation’s military and local communities. I will fight against any attempts to allow those who break our laws to be housed at Alabama’s military facilities, and I urge the Administration to humanely and expeditiously transport these individuals back to their homes.”

Elliott posted the following on his Facebook page at about 5:15 on June 3:

I received the following in an e-mail this afternoon. We will keep you informed of any developments.

Subject: Notification on Temporary Shelters for Unaccompanied Children

The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at the Department of Health and Human Services is identifying capacity, should it need to expand, to provide shelter for potential increases in apprehensions of Unaccompanied Children at the U.S. Southern Border.

To ensure sufficient capacity to provide shelter to unaccompanied children referred to HHS, HHS is scheduling site assessments at the below locations to determine the feasibility of utilizing the property for semi-permanent shelters should we exceed the shelter capacity currently available:

Naval Air Station Whiting Field – DOD land – two air fields that are part of Whiting Field, which is headquartered in Florida (7511 USS Enterprise St., Milton, FL 32570) but the air fields are located in Alabama:

o Naval OutLying Field (NOLF) Silverhill – Silverhill, Alabama

o Naval OutLying Field (NOLF) Wolf – Orange Beach, Alabama

The site assessments will comprise representatives from the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement, the individual facilities, and safety officials and will assess the viability of the sites. Please note this is only an assessment of the site’s feasibility– no final decision has been made regarding the use of these properties for the temporary shelter of unaccompanied children.

We expect a decision about the feasibility of the sites to serve as a temporary shelter location to be made as quickly as possible. Local and congressional officials will continue to be informed as part of the decision-making process. If the site is selected to serve as a temporary shelter location and additional shelter capacity proves necessary, the arrival of children at the facility would occur only after preparations and notifications are complete.