U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren was blocked from entering the prison camp for migrant children in Homestead, Florida on Wednesday—she hasn’t been the only federal legislator prevented from entering this facility, either—but described catching glimpses through fencing of detained kids in conditions she compared to a prison.
“There’s packed earth—nothing green,” she described in a video following her visit, saying that she witnessed children, in single-file lines, being moved from structure to structure. “No laughing. No playing. So I waved to the children. Some kept their heads down. Some looked our way and then quickly looked back down. Others waved but then put their hands down.”
Conditions at this privately run prison camp are atrocious, with kids forbidden from even writing in a journal and others faced with threats of prolonged imprisonment for rule-breaking. “I couldn’t tell what the guards were saying to them,” Warren continued. “But that’s not what kids are supposed to look like, that’s not how kids are supposed to act. These are children who are prisoners.”
Warren shared that she would be visiting Homestead during a town hall earlier this week, prompted by an activist who is part of a group that appears regularly outside the facility to support the children inside. During Warren’s visit Wednesday, HuffPost reported, advocates chanted, “Shut it down” and “Homes instead.” Others chanted “Los queremos,” or “We love you,” and “Estamos con ustedes,” or “We’re with you.”
Warren said she struggled to explain her visit to her family. “What did they do wrong? Why are they locked up?” she said her grandson Atticus asked. “I don’t have an answer for him. I could tell him about the bigger policies, about Donald Trump … I could talk to him about the claims of caravans and people stacking up at the borders. I can talk to him about mommas wrapping up their babies and running for their lives ... but none of that would explain why these children are locked up in this place.”
Warren hasn’t been the only Democratic presidential candidate to shine a light on this facility this week. Florida Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who has consistently called out conditions there and has in the past also been blocked from entering, called on all candidates to join her at Homestead on Friday, and a number have committed to doing so. “Right now there are thousands of children detained in prison-like, temporary facilities like Homestead,” she said, “and we have no idea when these kids are going to be released.”
They need to be released now, because no child belongs in detention, period. “Now, our immigration system should be about keeping us safe, and about reflecting our values,” Warren continued. “An immigration system that can’t tell the difference between a terrorist—a criminal—and a little girl, is not an immigration system that is keeping us safe. Boy. Go to a place like Homestead, and you’ll know for sure.”
