The president of the American Bar Association has condemned the Trump administration’s neglectful treatment of vulnerable migrant children, calling conditions inside Customs and Border Protection detention facilities “unsafe and unhealthy” and “in violation of federal and state law, court settlements and common decency.”
With the administration blocking press from accessing border detention facilities to document and report on conditions inside, “journalists have been forced to rely on the eyes and ears of lawyers and advocates,” Daily Kos’ Kerry Eleveld wrote earlier this week. What they have witnessed have been human rights atrocities, including sick children near death, and ongoing detention in blatant violation of U.S. law, said ABA president Bob Carlson.
“This week, the American public learned that children, including infants, were being held for up to weeks at a time in overcrowded federal facilities that lack the most basic of human necessities,” Carlson said in the statement. “The law requires that children who are held must be transferred to the custody of Health and Human Services within 72 hours.” But attorneys who recently visited a Clint, Texas, border facility said they’d met children who had gone weeks without being able to take a bath or even change their clothes.
Attorneys who also spoke to a number of detained girls said a Border Patrol agent had handed a 2-year-old boy off to them. Jailed children are being forced to take care of other jailed children. “In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention,” said visiting attorney Holly Cooper of the University of California, Davis’ Immigration Law Clinic, “I have never heard of this level of inhumanity.”
This must end now, Carlson continued, saying that Congress must “pass supplemental appropriations to ensure the appropriate treatment and care of unaccompanied immigrant children in government custody.” House Democrats have passed some requirements for improved treatment of the children, but those pro-life Republicans “fiercely oppose those requirements,” Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson said.
“The ABA calls on federal authorities to immediately end this inhumane and illegal treatment of children and provide attorney access to facilities operated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” Carlson said. “And we call on the administration to enforce laws and settlements that guarantee humane, minimal standards of care for vulnerable children, no matter how they arrived in our country.”