Congress gave the Trump administration a giant check to improve conditions for detained children and their families in border detention facilities, but House Oversight Committee staffers found during recent visits to them that these conditions persist, including young kids not being fed age-appropriate food and parents not being given enough diapers for their babies. Following those findings, the Oversight chair said Homeland Security blocked staffers from further visits.
“DHS took these actions without warning—after Committee staff were already en route to these sites—even though the Committee notified the Department of the inspections weeks ago and agreed to multiple accommodations to facilitate the visits,” Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings complained to acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan.
According to the letter, DHS blocked staff from visiting as many as 11 Customs and Border Protection facilities, including sites the Homeland Security inspector general previously warned were “an immediate risk” to both detainees and staffers. In one abusive instance detailed by Cummings, “one detainee alleged that a Border Patrol agent told a child who had spilled soup that the child would not receive more food unless the child drank the spilled soup off the floor.”
Other “detainees at Border Patrol facilities also told Committee staff that they were pressured into signing documents in English without translation and denied access to telephones.” Cummings said McAleenan also “imposed restrictions” on monitoring of a number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities, where some “detainees expressed concerns about rotten food and inadequate access to medical care,” while others said that “they had been held by ICE for more than a year.”
HuffPost reports that ranking committee member Jim Jordan claimed that Oversight staffers were being “rude” to officers, something disputed by Cummings, who says that it was actually an ICE official who threatened to shut down one inspection, after a detainee at the Adams County Correctional Center in Mississippi pounded on the glass partition to tell staffers he was being mistreated. Jordan, who has a history of overlooking abuses, also claimed that facilities were “well stocked and well tended.” So then what is DHS trying to hide?
“That is not the way effective oversight works,” Cummings continued. “Congress has an independent responsibility under the Constitution to determine whether federal programs are operating as they should be―not merely to accept the administration’s word for it.” But there also comes a point where letters just won’t cut it, and we’re past that point. Congress has oversight duty, and members need to be brave enough to show up at these facilities anyway. Let border officials try to physically push them away, so the whole nation can see.
