A “staggering number” of migrant children being held in a Border Patrol facility in South Texas are facing overcrowded conditions, some of which are held for up to seven days, attorneys interviewing them Thursday told CBS News.
Neha Desai, a lawyer representing migrant youth in US custody, said she interviewed children who said they were hungry, as well as minors who showered only once every seven days.
“Some guys said the conditions were so crowded that they took turns sleeping on the floor,” added Desai, citing interviews with nearly a dozen unaccompanied migrant children detained in the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) holding in Donna. Texas.
On March 2, the Donna complex was home to more than 1,800 people – 729% of the pandemic capacity, which is intended for 250 migrants, according to an internal CBP document reviewed by CBS News.
Most minors said they had only showered once while in US custody, even though they had been detained for more than five days, according to Desai. Some said they showered twice.
“They all said they wanted to shower more and were told they couldn’t,” Desai said.
US Customs and Border Protection
As attorneys representing migrant children in the federal lawsuit over the historic Flores Settlement Agreement, Desai and her colleagues at the National Center for Youth Law have the right to interview minors in U.S. Immigration Service.
Desai said she and one of her colleagues were only able to interview some of the hundreds of migrant children held in the Donna facility, a large tent complex designed to hold unaccompanied minors and families with children for short periods of time. The lawyers said CBP denied them a tour of the facility.
The Donna facility, which opened last month, has been running above its pandemic era for weeks, CBP acknowledged in a recent complaint to federal court. The facility detained 854 children on February 21 and nearly 700 children two days earlier, according to the court’s indictment, which also noted that social distancing “could not be observed at all times given the increasing number of people in detention.”
Among the children interviewed were a young teenager in US custody with her baby and an 8-year-old unaccompanied girl. Some of the kids who traveled with older siblings were even younger, Desai said.
“There was a staggering number of very young children,” she said.
Many of the children were visibly emotional, Desai said, especially siblings of different sexes who were separated and housed in different parts of the Donna facility. The young detainees, Desai said, also said they had no access to outside activities. She said the kids told her “they never saw the sun.”
“One of them said he could only see the sun when he showered because you can see the sun through the window,” said Desai, noting that the children raised this issue during their interviews outside the CBP facility. .
The minors who spoke to Desai also said their phone calls had been refused to communicate with family members. “They were crying hysterically because they wanted to talk to their families,” she said.
“We appreciate the extraordinary challenge the government is facing in undoing the damage done by the previous administration’s immigration policy,” said Desai. “That said, it is very worrying to see young children in facilities for days on end, unable to shower, call their families, or see the sunlight.”
The Department of Homeland Security said border guards are working to “quickly and efficiently” hand over unaccompanied minors to the United States Refugee Agency, which Congress has charged with housing these children.
“Tackling the flow of unaccompanied children crossing our southwest border is a major priority of this administration and the DHS,” the department said in a statement to CBS News. “It requires a coordinated and sustained response across the government.”
US Customs and Border Protection
During a phone call with reporters on Wednesday, Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said his agency was “struggling” with the number of migrant families and children in its care. But he said the CBP provided children with access to medical contractors, welfare checks, blankets, baby food, hot meals, and showers at least every 48 hours.
“Many of us, perhaps most of us, are parents,” Miller said. “I have a 6-year-old myself, and these border guards do everything they can to take care of the children every day.”
In an interview with Univision’s Jorge Ramos, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said he saw “too many children” when he visited the Donna facility earlier this month. But he applauded Border Patrol agents for their “ heroism, ” saying the kids were well looked after.
“There are no children in cages in the United States,” Mayorkas said according to a transcript of the interview.
A sharp increase in the number unaccompanied minors entering US custody along the southern border, the government’s ability to handle them has seriously strained, creating significant humanitarian and logistical challenges for the Biden government.
Nearly 9,500 unaccompanied children were taken into custody at the U.S. border in February – a 21-month high, according to government data.
According to government figures obtained by CBS News, more than 7,000 of these minors were transferred to shelters supervised by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for housing them until a sponsor, usually a family member in the US, is found. .
With nearly 9,000 children currently in custody, the refugee organization is trying to expand its bed space, which has been limited by social distance measures. To accommodate more children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed those restrictions last week, citing “extraordinary circumstances.”
The lack of sleeping space and the rising trend of unaccompanied minors entering US custody has led to a logjam of underage migrants in Border Patrol facilities, most of which are built to hold adult males for short periods.
As of earlier this week, more than 3,200 unaccompanied children have been detained in Border Patrol facilities, according to CBP documents obtained by CBS News. Nearly 1,400 of the children were held for more than 72 hours, the legal limit that border officials must give to unaccompanied minors at the refugee office.
Desai said the children she interviewed on Thursday had a similar feeling about their time in border patrol surveillance.
“Several kids said the exact same sentence: ‘The only time I get up is to throw out trash or go to the bathroom,’” she said.