Campaign Action
Immigration officials, in the dead of night “in order to avoid escape attempts,” have been transferring hundreds of migrant kids weekly from facilities all across the U.S. to a prison camp for children in Tornillo, Texas, the New York Times reports, due to overcrowding from the administration’s deliberate effort to make it harder to release detained kids to sponsors, including relatives.
“At one shelter in the Midwest whose occupants were among those recently transferred to Tornillo,” the explosive report continues, “about two dozen children were given just a few hours’ notice last week before they were loaded onto buses—any longer than that, according to one of the shelter workers, and the children may have panicked or tried to flee.” Some facility staffers “cried when they learned of the move, the shelter worker said, fearing what was in store for the children who had been in their care.”
Why wouldn’t already-traumatized kids panic or flee? This “temporary” prison camp has already been extended for a third time, and will explode from 400 beds this past summer, to as many as 3,800 beds by the end of the year. Officials will also deprive kids of some of their basic necessities: “The tent city ... is unregulated, except for guidelines created by the Department of Health and Human Services. For example, schooling is not required there, as it is in regular migrant children shelters.”
Child detention is inhumane, period. “A number of medical organizations, including those governing psychology, psychiatry and pediatrics, have issued letters of protest, citing an increased risk of anxiety and depression in the children, as well as post-traumatic stress and attention-deficit disorder,” the New York Times reported during the height of media attention on the child separation crisis this past summer.
Yet, the administration has a record number of jailed migrant kids—nearly 13,000—the vast majority of them minors who came here by themselves. They could be released to sponsors, including relatives already here, but the administration has instead arrested immigrant sponsors who have stepped forward, leaving more kids detained and, like falling dominoes, making other potential sponsors not step forward. It’s criminal, it’s evil, and it’s happening with our tax dollars.
“Let it sink in,” said Frank Sharry, founder of immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice. “In America, the land of the free, the home of the brave and the shining city on the hill, 13,000 kids are being held in indefinite detention by our government. Because of this administration’s strategy of deliberate dehumanization, 2,000 languish in a tent city in rural West Texas. They were put there to deny them hope, education, and access to legal counsel. They were put there to send a message that those seeking safety will be locked up until they’re sent back.”