Trump administration attorneys are demanding a federal court ignore declarations made by a number of experts, including physicians and children’s advocates, as part of a legal case that could once and for all shut down the Homestead prison camp for migrant kids in Florida. So just what exactly are government attorneys asking the judge to disregard?
There’s testimony from leading attorney and advocate Hope Frye, who has quite literally helped save the lives of sick migrant kids in U.S. custody. She said in her testimony that children jailed at Homestead reported significant delays in getting medical attention, while others were denied access to legal services, as well as “adequate time to speak with their families on the phone.”
“Government attorneys said in their filing Friday that Frye's declaration should be deemed inadmissible because some information she referred to had been gleaned from interviews conducted by other members of her team, rather than Frye herself,” CBS News reported. That’s convincing. Gotta wonder how these government attorneys in particular also feel about a toothbrush or sleeping mat.
Claiming she “doesn't qualify as an expert,” government attorneys are also seeking to block a declaration from the co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Immigrant Health Special Interest Group. Marsha Griffin, who is a University of Texas Rio Grande Valley pediatrics professor and has toured a number of detention facilities, wrote that “In my opinion, the government is causing irrevocable mental and physical harm to every immigrant child held in immigration detention.”
Government attorneys also want a psychiatrist “who wrote of what he described as ‘clear ongoing psychological harm directly attributable to detention and separation practices’” blocked, claiming he “did not adequately describe his methodology.” Because if there’s an entity that’s concerned about transparency and qualifications and making sure the wrong people don’t have influence in important matters, it’s the Trump administration.
Homestead gets a bad rep because it’s a bad place. In February, Miami New Times reported that a number of jailed children were sexually abused, and the following month, other kids told Sen. Jeff Merkley that they were routinely threatened by staffers with prolonged imprisonment “if they misbehaved.” While all kids were removed from Homestead in August, the administration has kept the empty prison running to the tune of $33 million in anticipation of jailing kids there later.
Homestead needs to be shut down once and for all, period. CBS News reports that the lead attorney in the fight to end it believes the government attorneys will be unsuccessful in their effort to block the declarations. “We believe the court will consider our expert declaration,” said Peter Schey, “as they are executed by physicians with vast experience dealing with health issues of vulnerable groups of children and are based on personal visits to detention facilities and interviews with detained migrant children.”