By Caitlin Dickerson
A
chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an overcrowded
border station in Clint, Tex., where hundreds of young people who have
recently crossed the border are being held, according to lawyers who
visited the facility this week. Some of the children have been there for
nearly a month.
Children as young as 7
and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are
caring for infants they’ve just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without
diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are
wearing clothes stained with breast milk.
Most
of the young detainees have not been able to shower or wash their
clothes since they arrived at the facility, those who visited said. They
have no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap.
[Hundreds of migrant children have now been transferred out of the facility.]
“There
is a stench,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights
Clinic at Columbia Law School, one of the lawyers who visited the
facility. “The overwhelming majority of children have not bathed since
they crossed the border.”
Conditions
at Customs and Border Protection facilities along the border have been
an issue of increasing concern as officials warn that the recent large
influx of migrant families has driven many of the facilities well past
their capacities. The border station in Clint is only one of those with problems.
In
May, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security
warned of “dangerous overcrowding” among adult migrants housed at the
border processing center in El Paso, with up to 900 migrants being held
at a facility designed for 125. In some cases, cells designed for 35
people were holding 155 people.
“Border
Patrol agents told us some of the detainees had been held in
standing-room-only conditions for days or weeks,” the inspector
general’s office said in its report, which noted that some detainees
were observed standing on toilets in the cells “to make room and gain
breathing space, thus limiting access to the toilets.”
Gov.
Greg Abbott of Texas on Friday announced the deployment of 1,000 new
National Guard troops to the border to help respond to the continuing
new arrivals, which the governor said have amounted to more than 45,000
people from 52 countries over the past three weeks.
“The
crisis at our southern border is unlike anything we’ve witnessed before
and has put an enormous strain on the existing resources we have in
place,” Mr. Abbott said, adding, “Congress is a group of reprobates for
not addressing the crisis on our border.”
The
number of border crossings appears to have slowed in recent weeks,
possibly as a result of a crackdown by the Mexican government under
pressure from President Trump, but the numbers remain high compared to
recent years. The overcrowding crisis has been unfolding invisibly, with
journalists and lawyers offered little access to fenced-off border
facilities.
The reports of unsafe and
unsanitary conditions at Clint and elsewhere came days after government
lawyers in court argued that they should not have to provide soap or
toothbrushes to children under the legal settlement that gave Ms.
Mukherjee and her colleagues access to the facility in Clint. The result
of a lawsuit that was first settled in 1997, the settlement set the
standards for the detention, treatment and release of migrant minors
taken into federal immigration custody.
Ms.
Mukherjee is part of a team of lawyers who has for years under the
settlement been allowed to inspect government facilities where migrant
children are detained. She and her colleagues traveled to Clint this
week after learning that border officials had begun detaining minors who
had recently crossed the border there.
She
said the conditions in Clint were the worst she had seen in any
facility in her 12-year career. “So many children are sick, they have
the flu, and they’re not being properly treated,” she said. The
Associated Press, which first reported on conditions at the facility
earlier this week, found that it was housing three infants, all with
teen mothers, along with a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds and a 3-year-old.
It said there were dozens more children under the age of 12.
Ms.
Mukherjee said children were being overseen by guards for Customs and
Border Protection, which declined to comment for this story. She and her
colleagues observed the guards wearing full uniforms — including
weapons — as well as face masks to protect themselves from the
unsanitary conditions.
Together, the
group of six lawyers met with 60 children in Clint this week who ranged
from 5 months to 17 years old. The infants were either children of minor
parents, who were also detained, or had been separated from adult
family members with whom they had crossed the border. The separated
children were now alone, being cared for by other young detainees.
“The
children are locked in their cells and cages nearly all day long,” Ms.
Mukherjee said. “A few of the kids said they had some opportunities to
go outside and play, but they said they can’t bring
themselves to play because they are trying to stay alive in there.”
When
the lawyers arrived, federal officials said that more than 350 children
were detained at the facility. The officials did not disclose the
facility’s capacity but said the population had exceeded it. By the time
the lawyers left on Wednesday night, border officials told them that
about 200 of the children had been transferred elsewhere but did not say
where they had been sent.
“That’s what’s keeping me up at night,” Ms. Mukherjee said.
Some
sick children were being quarantined in the facility. The lawyers were
allowed to speak to the children by phone, but their requests to meet
with them in person and observe the conditions they were being held in
were denied.
The children told the
lawyers they were given the same meals every day — instant oats for
breakfast, instant noodles for lunch, a frozen burrito for dinner, along
with a few cookies and juice packets — which many said was not enough.
“Nearly every child I spoke with said that they were hungry,” Ms.
Mukherjee said.
Another group of
lawyers conducting inspections under the same federal court settlement
said they discovered similar conditions earlier this month at six other
facilities in Texas. At the Border Patrol’s Central Processing Center in
McAllen, Tex. — often known as “Ursula” — the lawyers encountered a
17-year-old mother from Guatemala who couldn’t stand because of
complications from an emergency C-section, and who was caring for a sick
and dirty premature baby.
“When we
encountered the baby and her mom, the baby was filthy. They wouldn’t
give her any water to wash her. And I took a Kleenex and I washed around
her neck black dirt,” said Hope Frye, who was leading the group,
adding, “Not a little stuff — dirt.”
After
government lawyers argued in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San
Francisco this week that amenities such as soap and toothbrushes should
not be mandated under the legal settlement originally agreed to between
the government and migrant families in 1997 and amended several times
since then, all three judges voiced dismay.
Among the guidelines set under the legal settlement are that facilities for children must be “safe and sanitary.”
The
Justice Department’s lawyer, Sarah Fabian, argued that the settlement
agreement did not specify the need to supply hygienic items and that,
therefore, the government did not need to do so.
“Are
you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring
you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night
long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an
aluminum foil blanket?” Judge William Fletcher asked Ms. Fabian. “I find
that inconceivable that the government would say that is safe and
sanitary.”
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