Three kids who are detained at the prison camp for unaccompanied migrant children in Florida told a U.S. senator that staff threatened not to reunite them with their families “if they misbehaved,” the Washington Post reports. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon heard their accounts during an oversight visit this week at the Homestead facility that is currently detaining nearly 1,600 children—and stands to get even bigger.
While officials have tried to paint an orderly picture at the privately-operated unlicensed facility, advocates who have visited it described meeting kids who burst into tears as they described how they’re not allowed to hug one another. “It was absolutely chilling to see so many children locked up in prison camps,” Merkley tweeted. “They should be in homes, playgrounds, and schools!”
While the administration says children jailed there are minors who came to the U.S. alone, other Democratic lawmakers who visited say they met kids who came to the U.S. with a relative, such as an aunt or uncle, but were then separated. “We spoke with a number of kids and they all said they came with someone,” Rep. Sylvia Garcia of Texas said at the time. “But they were separated, so it’s still happening.”
Like the former prison camp for migrant children in Tornillo, Texas, Homestead is facing public backlash. Last month, the Miami New Times reported that two children there said they were sexually abused. Then this month, the private company that is federally contracted to run the prison camp abandoned a plan to go public. Tornillo finally shut down in January, and Homestead deserves the same fate. Children should not be in detention, period.
“Homestead is part of a system that stems from the administration’s strategy of criminalizing flight from oppression. That’s completely wrong,” Merkley said. “This administration needs to quit treating migrants as criminals, quit trying to inflict trauma on children as a strategy of deterrence, and ensure that every child with an asylum claim is treated in a dignified and decent manner while they await their asylum hearing.”