Face masks weren’t the only things facility officials reportedly rushed to give detained immigrants before an inspection of a Texas facility by a congressional delegation earlier this week. A mom detained by immigration officials at the privately run migrant family jail said that after denying her 8-year-old son any toys, staff gave him one just minutes before members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus were set to arrive, The Associated Press reports.
But the traumatic treatment of this child by officials isn’t the family’s only worry, the report continues. They’re currently in the isolation wing of the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, after they were told a staffer who has tested positive for COVID-19 was in contact with them. The mom, who asked to not be identified to protect her case, said her son is now terrified. “I tell him we're not going to die,” she told the AP. “We feel anguished. We can't do anything for our own lives or the lives of our children.”
“The isolation of at least three families at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's detention center in Dilley, Texas, has raised new fears of the coronavirus spreading through a facility that has long been accused of providing substandard medical care,” the report continued. “ICE confirmed it had isolated the families but denied that they had not had access to toys.”
But we know ICE lies as sure as the sun rises in the morning. Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Texas, among the Hispanic Caucus members who inspected facilities this week, tweeted: “Some detainees told us that many of them did not get masks until April,” weeks after officials claimed they’d given masks to detainees. Garcia further told San Antonio Current that she believes some mask distribution and “enforcement of the masks just started last week in anticipation of our arrival. It looked like window-dressing for our visit.”
According to the report, two CoreCivic employees and one ICE employee who work at Dilley or were at the facility have tested positive, endangering all 160 children and families currently jailed there. “So far, no coronavirus cases among detainees have been reported at Dilley,” the report said. But, the detained mom told the AP that ICE hasn’t yet tested the families who were in contact with the staffer.
“A COVID-19 outbreak is already present in the facility or will soon be," Proyecto Dilley director Shalyn Fluharty told the AP.
As the AP reports, Dilley has been the site of numerous abuses against children in the past several years. In 2018, an 18-month-old toddler named Mariee died after being jailed there with her mom, Yazmin Juárez. In oftentimes grueling testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties last year, Juárez described to legislators how officials consistently failed to provide proper medical treatment for the child after she became sick at Dilley. “I noticed immediately how many sick kids there were—and no effort was made to separate the sick from the healthy,” she said.
“ICE was sued earlier this year by advocates for a 5-year-old boy who had suffered a head injury before his family was arrested by immigration agents,” the AP continued. “His aunt alleged Dilley medical staff was disregarding the child's severe headaches and hypersensitivity to sound. He and his mother were eventually released after an appeals court prevented their deportation."
This is intentional child abuse—and it’s happening in front of our eyes with state approval.