Migrant Children Being Kept in Appalling Conditions

[Content Note: Nativism; child abuse.]

The Trump Regime is abusing children. And with every new report we get about the conditions in which migrant children are being detained, it becomes more urgent that we raise relentless hell about the state-sanctioned torture of children being done under the auspices of "protecting" us.

The AP reports:

A legal team that recently interviewed over 60 children at a Border Patrol station in Texas says a traumatic and dangerous situation is unfolding for some 250 infants, children and teens locked up for up to 27 days without adequate food, water and sanitation.

A team of attorneys who recently visited the facility near El Paso told The Associated Press that three girls, ages 10 to 15, said they had been taking turns keeping watch over a sick 2-year-old boy because there was no one else to look after him.

When the lawyers saw the 2-year-old boy, he wasn't wearing a diaper and had wet his pants, and his shirt was smeared in mucus. They said at least 15 children at the facility had the flu, and some were kept in medical quarantine. Children told lawyers that they were fed uncooked frozen food or rice and had gone weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes at the facility in Clint, in the desert scrubland some 25 miles southeast of El Paso.

"In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention I have never heard of this level of inhumanity," said Holly Cooper, an attorney who represents detained youth. "Seeing our country at this crucible moment where we have forsaken children and failed to see them as human is hopefully a wake up for this country to move toward change."

The Flores settlement stipulates that children can be held by Border Patrol for no more than 72 hours before being transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services, but "many children interviewed by the lawyers said they were kept inside the facility near El Paso beyond 72 hours."

The Trump Regime justifies this violation of the law by saying that Border Patrol is overwhelmed, but they could simply stop separating and detaining families. Instead: "The Trump administration has been scrambling to find new space to hold immigrants as it faces withering criticism from Democrats that it's violating the human rights of migrant children by keeping so many of them detained."

Just yesterday, Dallas/Fort Worth reporter Jason Whitely reported: "Feds are opening a new camp in Texas for unaccompanied minors who are crossing the U.S./Mexico border. This one, just outside Carrizo Springs, Texas, will house more than 1,000 captured children."

Captured children.

The government cannot provide proper care to the children already in its custody, and they want to add 1,000 more. Because the neglect, the cruelty, the malice is the agenda. Harm is the objective.

MAKE YOUR CALLS. Resist.