Asylum-seeker Yasmin Juárez is calling the Trump administration’s move to kill decades-old protections for detained migrant children “cruel and inhumane.” She tragically knows the consequences of locking up kids: her 19-month-old toddler, Mariee, died after spending weeks in federal immigration custody last year.
Juárez bravely testified before a House committee this past July, describing how Mariee arrived healthy to a migrant family jail in Dilley, Texas, but then became sick after Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials “made no effort ... to separate the sick from the healthy.” Officials then failed to provide Mariee proper medical treatment, releasing the family only after the child had deteriorated.
But it was too late—Mariee died in a hospital of viral pneumonitis just a few weeks after their release from Dilley. “For me, it was the worst experience of my life,” Juárez told NPR last week. “My daughter got sick so suddenly and so quickly while we were in detention, and they didn't have adequate treatment for her. It was a horrible, horrible experience.”
Now the Trump administration wants to jail more children, and for longer, at family jails like Dilley by ending the Flores Agreement. These jails are frequently misrepresented as “residential centers”—even “summer camp” by one administration official—but they are family jails, and no family belongs there. In fact, when Trump officials were asked if they’d put their own kids in one of these places, they all refused to answer.
The Trump administration is claiming that in place of the protections granted under Flores, it “would provide an unknown third party to oversee a facility's compliance with standards,” but the administration has no credibility: no child had died in federal immigration custody for years, until last year. In the case of one child, 10-year-old Darlyn Cristabel Cordova-Valle, the administration kept her death secret for eight months.
Children do not belong in detention, under this administration or any other one, period. “[Juárez] is suing the federal government,” NPR reported, “which has not commented on her case. She says she's shocked anyone would propose holding children in family detention centers like Dilley.” She’s right. “Dilley is no place for children,” she continued.