We went to a border detention center for children. What we saw was awful
A 14-year old told us she was taking care of a 4-year old who had been placed in her cell with no relatives. "I take her to the bathroom, give her my extra food if she is hungry, and tell people to leave her alone if they are bothering her," she said.
She was just one of the children we talked with last week as part of a team of lawyers and doctors monitoring conditions for children in US border facilities. We have been speaking out urgently, since then, about the devastating and abusive circumstances we've found. The Trump administration claims it needs even more detention facilities to address the issue, but policy makers and the public should not be fooled into believing this is the answer.
The situation we found is unacceptable. US Border Patrol is holding many children, including some who are much too young to take care of themselves, in jail-like border facilities for weeks at a time without contact with family members, regular access to showers, clean clothes, toothbrushes, or proper beds. Many are sick. Many, including children as young as 2 or 3, have been separated from adult caretakers without any provisions for their care besides the unrelated older children also being held in detention.
We spoke with an 11-year-old caring for his toddler brother. Both were fending for themselves in a cell with dozens of other children. The little one was quiet with matted hair, a hacking cough, muddy pants and eyes that fluttered closed with fatigue. As we interviewed the two brothers, he fell asleep on two office chairs drawn together, probably the most comfortable bed he had used in weeks. They had been separated from an 18-year-old uncle and sent to the Clint Border Patrol Station. When we met them, they had been there three weeks and counting.
"Sometimes when we ask, we are told we will be here for months," said one 14-year-old who had also been at Clint for three weeks.
Some of the children we spoke with were sleeping on concrete floors and eating the same unpalatable and unhealthy food for close to a month: instant oatmeal, instant soup and a previously-frozen burrito. Children should spend no more than a few hours in short-term border jails to be processed and US-law limits their detention under typical circumstances to 72 hours.
The government has been unapologetic about conditions. A Department of Justice lawyer, Sarah Fabian, told judges in the Ninth Circuit last week that the government's obligation to provide "safe and sanitary" conditions for child migrants does not require it to provide children with hygiene items such as soap or toothbrushes and it can have them sleep on concrete floors in cold, overcrowded cells.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/we-went-to-a-border-detention-center-for-children-what-we-saw-was-awful/ar-AADmaNZ?li=BBnb7Kz
