US detention centers, the terrible conditions of migrant children:separated from their parents, malnourished and in appalling sanitary conditions

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ValigiaBlu

https://www.valigiablu.it/migranti-bambini-centri-detenzione-usa-trump/

"President Trump's immigration policy has crossed the line from gratuitous cruelty to blunt sadism.He probably likes seeing innocent children crowded together in filth and squalor.Maybe he thinks this is America.Trump supporters, do you say he's right?Republican members of Congress, in your opinion?Is that what you want?"

These are the questions posed by Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson, journalist and political analyst, in an editorial published on Washington Post following the June 17 visit of a group of lawyers, doctors and activists to the Clint detention center for migrants, near El Paso, Texas, during which it was not possible to view the facility but had the opportunity to interview more than 50 of the approximately 351 minors held in a complex that can contain a maximum of just over 100.

away CNN

Most of the children at Clint come from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.More than 100 are under 13 years of age, while 18 are under 4 years of age.The youngest is 4 and a half months old.

The access - authorized to monitor the administration's application of the law on the treatment of migrant children - gave the opportunity to witness the horrifying and inhuman conditions in which minors separated from their families find themselves awaiting the examination of the asylum request, as established by measure came into force last April 2018 and despite the step back of American President Donald Trump on June 20, 2018 with which, through a decree, ordered that migrant families remain together.

At the end of the visit, how reports The Washington Post, the image that remained printed in W.'s mind.Warren H.Binford, one of the six lawyers who entered the center, a profound expert and supporter of children's rights, internationally esteemed and professor of law as well as director of the Law Clinic program at Willamette University, is that of a young 15-year-old mother and her her baby covered in mucus.Although she repeatedly continued to rinse the little girl's clothes with water, the little girl was unable to clean them.Because there is no soap in the center.And not even baby food.Just cereal for breakfast, ready-made soup for lunch and a frozen burrito for dinner.

The absence of soap is not accidental but a deliberate choice.This was supported by the Trump administration itself, on June 18, during a hearing held before a jury of the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, which declared that the government is not required to provide soap or toothbrushes to minors detained at the border between the United States and Mexico and which can make them sleep on concrete floors in cold, overcrowded cells, despite an agreement requiring detainees to be held in "safe and sanitary" facilities.

«Are you seriously claiming not to read the agreement because it asks you to do something other than what I just listed i.e. cold at night, lights on all night, sleeping on concrete with aluminum foil for a blanket?I find it inconceivable that the government says that all this is safe and hygienic», he said one of the three judges of the Ninth Circuit William Fletcher addressing Sarah Fabian of the Department of Justice who represented the American administration.

The stories told by the minors held in the Clint center shocked those who listened to them."We were simply horrified," he declared Binford al Washington Post.

Thanks to the interviews it was possible to ascertain that the minors were not only not assisted but were abandoned, neglected and forgotten.Children who hadn't bathed for days, some with lice, others with the flu.Children, the only ones who take care of other children.

«They were dirty, they had mucus on their shirts....And food.Even on the trousers.They told us they were hungry.They told us that some of them had not showered or had not showered until a day or two before we arrived.Many reported brushing their teeth only once.The center had known since the previous week that we would arrive.The government for three weeks."

“I'm always hungry here in Clint.I'm so hungry that I wake up in the middle of the night.Sometimes I wake up hungry at 4 in the morning, sometimes at other times.I am too afraid to ask the officers for more food, even though there is never enough for me,” one of the young witnesses told Binford.

The children told the lawyers that no one is looking after them.In some cases it is the older ones who do it with the younger ones, in other cases vice versa.It is the same agents who ask the children to choose who to look after from two, three, four year olds.Although it then happens, as time passes, that the older children give up and the little ones are handed over to other children or remain alone.

During the interview with a 14-year-old girl, the 2-year-old child she looked after peed, wetting her because he didn't have a diaper.Those aren't even in the center.The girl shrugged her shoulders at Binford, knowing she didn't know what to do.

Many minors reported sleeping on a concrete floor.Most reported receiving two blankets, the type used by the military, made of shaggy wool, one to put on the ground, the other to use to cover themselves.Others only had one and didn't know whether to use it to lie down or to protect themselves from the air conditioning.

Legal experts who monitor the treatment of migrant children rarely release their reports, but Binford and his colleagues were so shocked by what they saw and heard that they had to make it public.

«For 12 years I have visited children detained in custody under the authority of the Federal Immigration Service», he declared al Guardian Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants' Rights Legal Clinic at Columbia Law School, is another of the lawyers who have accessed the center.«I've never seen anything like it.I have never seen, smelled or had to witness such degrading and inhuman conditions."She, like her colleague Binford, saw the dirty clothes worn by the children, some stained with bodily fluids including breast milk, urine and mucus, the same clothes they had on when they crossed the border days or weeks earlier.

Mukherjee said seven minors died while in federal custody or shortly after being released.No deaths had been recorded in the previous 10 years.“We became extremely worried and thought that more children might die if we didn't speak out publicly,” she said.

Once they arrived in Clint, the lawyers learned of the presence of some minors in quarantine due to a flu epidemic.The children were not interviewed in person, to ensure adequate medical care, so the lawyers communicated by telephone only with the older ones.

According to the law, minors should not be detained.Most were expected to be released shortly thereafter to be cared for by a parent, relative or guardian in the United States.

Clara Long, senior US researcher at Human Rights Watch, who was part of the group that entered the Clint center, he said that she was devastated by what she saw.

Like the encounter with two brothers, a three-year-old girl with disheveled hair, dry cough, mud-dirty trousers and eyes that barely opened due to tiredness and her 11-year-old brother, both locked up first in a cage and then in a cell after being separated from their 18-year-old uncle with whom they crossed the border last May.

“The things I've seen this week are consistent with previous conclusions Human Rights Watch has reached about the consequences of harm to children caused by weeks of detention rather than days.Congress should investigate and act urgently to stop this senseless abuse, and call on immigration agencies to release these children as soon as possible to reunite them with their families,” Long said.

If the reports of Binford, Mukherjee and Long paint an already serious picture, worse are the stories of Dolly Lucio Sevier, a doctor who took care of 39 minors detained in the Ursula detention center in McAllen, Texas, after the report of some lawyers who they had discovered a flu epidemic in which five babies had been admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit.

In order to have Lucio Server access the McAllen facility, the lawyers representing the children threatened to sue the government if the visit was denied.These lawyers belong to a team working to verify the application of theFlores Agreement of 1997 which defined detention standards for unaccompanied minors, including detention for no more than 72 hours in "the least restrictive environment possible, appropriate to the child's age and particular needs".

"The prison conditions could be compared to those of facilities where torture is practiced," wrote Lucio Sevier in a medical report released exclusively to ABC News.

“Extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water or food.”

According to what was reported by Lucio Sevier, all the children who were examined showed symptoms of psychological trauma.The teenagers said they were unable to wash their hands throughout their detention.According to the doctor, this behavior "intentionally caused the spread of the disease".For Lucio Sevier the structure "was worse than a prison".

"Imagine your children in that place," the doctor said ABC News - I can't imagine that my son could stay there without suffering devastating consequences."

According to the medical report, the conditions of the newborns were even more appalling.Many teenage mothers in care described not having the ability to wash bottles.

“Denying parents the ability to wash their babies' bottles is unreasonable and could be considered intentional mental and emotional abuse,” Lucio Sevier wrote.

The children who were over 6 months old were not provided with food appropriate to their age and nutritional needs.

No access to the centers was allowed to journalists who were kept away and who were unable to write their articles based on direct testimonies.

As Paul Fahri tells in an article published by Washington Post "The information blackout has left most Americans in the dark about the conditions of government facilities designed to handle migrants who have crossed the border.Photographs and television images are rare and often dated.Even rarer are the interviews given by managers and employees of federal agencies or by the children themselves.

Journalists, government officials and migrant rights advocates agree that allowing journalists to see the facilities firsthand would change public perceptions about the treatment of migrants but not how."

“If journalists had access to border detention centers where children are held in disgusting conditions, those centers would not exist,” Elora Mukherjee told reporters.“If the videos were published there would be strong changes” because the protest would be enormous.

Caitlin Dickerson who works on immigration issues for the New York Times, said gaining access to detention facilities — never easy under any circumstances — has become even more difficult since December, when two children died while in federal custody.Dickerson isn't sure whether officials are intentionally blocking access to journalists or failing to handle the increase in media requests for access.

In any case, permitted visits reserved for the press are generally short and extremely organised, without interviews.Access is usually limited to a portion of the facility.

When news spread about the conditions of the centers, many people expressed the desire to lend a hand to the children hosted in the facilities.But after purchasing toys, soap, toothbrushes, diapers and medicine, they learned that no donations would be accepted.

Interviewed by Texas Tribune local residents, who tried in vain to donate to the facilities in Clint and McAllen, they confirmed the impossibility of being able to deliver what was purchased.

Texas Democratic Rep. Terry Canales tweeted that after speaking with the Border Patrol, he was told the donations were not welcome.

“These kids aren't being offered essential services and they're not getting what they need,” Canales said in a conversation with a U.S. Border Patrol official from the Rio Grande Valley.“We discussed diapers, hygiene products, and I insisted that it seems terrible not to meet their needs and not accept people's donations.”

Last July 1, a group of congressmen, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, went to downtown Clint.In a series of tweets, Ocasio-Cortez said she met women who cried out of fear of being punished, of contracting diseases, out of desperation, out of lack of sleep, because they were traumatized.

Ocasio-Cortez also recounted horrifying details of women forced to drink from toilet bowls due to lack of access to water.

Like many other members of Congress who have visited the facilities, Ocasio-Cortez said she was shocked by the lack of accountability of those who work at the center.

In an interview at the CNN MP Madeleine Dean recounted her encounter behind glass with some migrant children locked in a cage.“We tried to yell and someone told him we were members of Congress hoping to help, to understand, and when I quickly wrote a sentence on a piece of paper and placed it on the glass, the guard stopped me.The sentence simply said:'We love you, we love you' and the children smiled at us."

«And do you know what they did?They passed us a note through the floor, under the door, and we got in trouble.The guard was afraid that we were giving him something while it was the children who had written us a note that said:'How can we help you?'.The children wanted to help us."

Although visits to Clint and McAllen highlighted the abhorrent and shocking conditions to which detained minors are subjected, President Trump continues to make immigration a cornerstone of his administration's "zero tolerance" policy and a key issue in view of the upcoming 2020 presidential elections.After threatening to expel more than 2,000 undocumented immigrants and announcing that he would extend the deadline for this operation by two weeks, the president tweeted his intention to "fix the southern border" while inviting Democrats to support him.

Same day in an interview released to Chuck Todd for 's "Meet the Press" broadcast NBC Pressed by various questions in which he was asked to account for the conditions of migrant minors in detention centers, Trump accused his predecessor Barack Obama of having ordered the separation of families (indeed, the Obama administration provided for the separation of families but only in very rare in which the safety of the child was seriously put at risk) and that he inherited the law which he put an end to with the 2018 provision and criticized the Democrats for not wanting to change the immigration laws, effectively causing this emergency, furthermore, not approving the allocation of 4.6 billion dollars for the migrant emergency on the border with Mexico, of which 2.88 are reserved for unaccompanied minors.

In an article published by Houston Chronicle the situation relating to the separations of immigrant families arriving at the southern US border appears very different from that described by the president.One year after the signing of the executive order that was supposed to put an end to this cruel and controversial policy and the order of a federal judge that ordered the reunification of more than 2,800 children separated from their parents, the government was allowed to continue to divide families only when the parent represented a danger to the child or if he had committed some crime or was affiliated to some unrecognized group.In reality, from June 2018 to May 2019, according to data provided by the government to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), more than 700 children continued to be separated from their parents or relatives, often for unclear or minor reasons. consistency.

“These cases have increased dramatically in recent months,” Allo said Houston Chronicle Lee Gelernt, an ACLU lawyer who argues that the government is applying restrictive rules to cases that should be the exception.

According to Gelernt, many cases involve young children, children of parents accused of committing crimes such as traffic violations.

«The government unilaterally decides that the parents are a danger and then separates them without informing the facilities hosting the children that the child has been separated from the family, without telling the parent the reason for the separation and without giving the family any right to contest the decision,” continued Gelernt.

Last June 25, despite the fact that the House approved a new bill for the allocation of 4.5 billion dollars to be allocated to the emergency, a new political clash opened between the Democrats and President Trump who threatened to put the veto the measure which could also pass in the Senate without being modified and therefore foreseeing no restrictions on how the funds can be used, as he would have liked.

«My hope is that an important message has come from the House and that the Senate will do what it said it wanted to do, allocating humanitarian aid to the most vulnerable we are dealing with» he declared to Al Jazeera El Paso Democratic Congresswoman Veronica Escobar.

The law approved in the House provides, in fact, funding for "beds, blankets, diapers, food and legal assistance", Escobar told journalists, as well as supporting "alternatives to detention, policies that we know have worked effectively in the past, but which have been abandoned by this administration in favor of incarceration.We are also funding a pilot program to ensure that nonprofits and law enforcement are able to expedite the arrival of families to their sponsors.”

Following the passage of the measure in the House, through a statement the White House accused the Democratic lawmakers of "ignoring the administration's request to approve desperately needed funding to address the humanitarian crisis at the border", adding that they are trying to " take advantage of the current crisis by making political decisions that would make our country less safe."

After news broke about prison conditions in Clint and McAllen the New York Times he reported that approximately 249 children were transferred to a reception facility run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to Evelyn Stauffer, spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Humanitarian Service's Office of Refugee Resettlement, while another an unspecified number were sent to a temporary facility in El Paso, according to reports from Elizabeth Lopez-Sandoval, spokeswoman for Congresswoman Veronica Escobar who added that around 30 minors were estimated to be in Clint.

A Department of Homeland Security official said conditions at the temporary El Paso facility, built specifically for families, were far better than those in Clint, although it was not known whether the children had access to soap or showers. from the moment they arrived.They certainly underwent a medical check-up once they were transferred.

Meanwhile, on June 25, the interim commissioner for border security, John Sanders, submitted his resignation, which became effective on July 5, just two and a half months after taking office.The situation worsened after what emerged in Clint and McAllen.In an interview exclusive released to CNN Sanders explained how difficult it was for him on May 20 (one month after taking office) to learn the news of the death of the 16-year-old Guatemalan Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez while in custody.Since then it has tried to redouble its efforts to protect minors in custody.

According to a Department of Homeland Security official, Sanders, who has not explicitly criticized any administration policies, did not agree with the operation that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been conducting since Sunday 14 July (according to reported from the New York Times) which involves arrest and repatriation operations against 2,000 families of immigrants without documents ordered by courts in 10 American cities.

The operation, postponed by 15 days compared to the initial date, appears to have been postponed also due to the resistance found among immigration agency officials.

Once arrested, the families are expected to remain together in detention centers in Texas and Pennsylvania but, due to capacity issues, some may be housed in hotels until their travel documents are ready.Immigration and Customs Enforcement's goal is to repatriate families as quickly as possible.

“They arrived illegally and we are bringing them back legally,” Trump told reporters.

Preview image away Jackie Speier 

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