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The Trump administration’s first “tent city” for migrant children will reportedly be in Tornillo, Texas, where, according to Think Progress, “the average temperature in the area this summer will hover around 100 degrees Fahrenheit and could reach nearly 110 degrees.” This is a concentration camp, and a misery on American soil that is expected to jail as many as 450 kids torn from their parents under Donald Trump’s barbaric policy:
The increase of children who are alone and in need of care at the border is the product of a new Trump administration policy that on May 7 began criminally prosecuting all adult migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry.
Let’s get this straight: these kids are only alone because the administration is intentionally separating them by criminalizing their parents, and they are also separating families who have arrived at U.S. ports of entry to seek asylum, which is a legal act under U.S. and international law. The administration has been arresting so many families, in fact, that detention facilities for kids are overflowing and now, apparently, children will be imprisoned in a so-called “tent city”.
At least one detention facility for migrant kids, a former Walmart in Brownsville, Texas, is also expected to expand. This is the same facility that U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley tried to visit, and was infamously booted from by staff. According to The New York Times, this facility has had “at least 13 deficiency citations,” some “for minor infractions, including incomplete child records,” but others “for more serious problems.” Instead of getting these problems under control, more kids torn from parents will be packed inside. In May, the facility was licensed to jail just under 1,200 kids. Now, it’s been expanded to 1,500.
As Daily Kos’ Mark Sumner wrote earlier this week, MSNBC reporter Jason Soboroff, who toured the facility contracted out to Southwest Key Programs by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), found a jail “where children are given treatment usually reserved for the most dangerous inmates at a federal prison. They’re kept locked in for 22 hours each day, and given one hour of ‘structured time’ and only a single hour of ‘free time’ outdoors. Each boy gets 40 square feet of living space, which is the same as the minimum standard Texas uses for allocating space in a maximum security prison.” Not to mention the Trump propaganda disguised as a mural.
But it’s the history of how children are treated under custody that should also be of concern here. The Times reports that child detention facilities have been cited for pushing children, slapping “their hands with a ruler” and feeding a child “a meal she was allergic to, even though she was wearing a red bracelet that listed her allergies.” Another facility in McAllen was cited just last January for not giving a child their medication several times in a row, while a former employee alleged that during his time at a Southwest Key Programs facility in Tuscon, “children were running away, screaming, throwing furniture and attempting suicide”:
[Antar] Davidson said he also contacted the supervisor by phone, and she promised to take action, but conditions only worsened.
This is child negligence, this is child abuse, this is criminal—and now the administration expects us to believe that migrant kids will be treated humanely inside a “tent city” in 110-degree heat. The record at existing child detention centers only makes it clear that Tornillo, Texas, is a humanitarian disaster in waiting. Keep protesting, keep speaking out against this, and keep pressuring your members of Congress to support the Keep Families Together Act now.