Two court appointed inspectors have raised urgent alarms that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities currently detaining thousands of asylum-seeking unaccompanied children who are waiting to be transferred to Health and Human Services (HHS) custody to be placed with a sponsor “have been stretched beyond thin,” CBS News reports.
Inspectors said that one facility in Donna, Texas, that as of March 30 was holding about 3,000 children, most of them past the 72-hour legal limit. "Physical distancing precautions to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 have, out of necessity, been set aside and still, CBP facilities—which are not appropriate for minors, in any event—have been stretched beyond thin," inspectors found, the report said.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports for CBS News that court monitor Andrea Sheridan Ordin and medical expert Paul Wise, who conducted inspections as part of the Flores Agreement, said in a court filing on Friday that the level of overcrowding at Donna was "not sustainable,” and expressed particular concern for detained children under 12.
“Wise found the number of caregivers charged with caring for the ‘tender age’ unaccompanied children at Donna to be ‘profoundly inadequate,” the report said. “Due to the amount of young children, the caregivers had to focus on only caring for very young minors and those with special needs.”
The report said burdened medical staff were being assisted by teams from the U.S. Public Health Service, a uniformed service within HHS. Monitors noted the “plentiful” availability of water and snacks, and that “[b]aby formula and diapers were also available,” the report said. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said in a shocking report last year that CBP had violated law by spending emergency humanitarian funds meant for food and medical care for detained people on a canine program and dirt bikes.
Monitors noted that spaces “designed for walking, reading, or play are also fully occupied by mats,” and that some kids had been unable to bathe for lengthy periods of time due to the overcrowding. “The showers designed for an occupancy of 1,000 are occupied all day, with some children reporting that they did not receive showers for days at a time,” the filing said.
The CBS News report said that the court monitor called the Biden administration’s opening of emergency sites to get kids out of CBP custody while they wait to be transferred to HHS "a constructive strategy,” but “recommended in its report that HHS develop standards for the care of minors in these facilities.” ProPublica’s Dara Lind reported last week that at some new emergency sites in California and Texas, “[n]o safety standards are in place.”
“While previous influx sites have been criticized by Democrats in Congress and immigration advocates for sometimes falling short of state standards for licensed facilities, HHS has generally agreed to hold operators to those standards, said attorney Leecia Welch of the National Center for Youth Law,” ProPublica reported. “But it hasn’t committed to that now. Nor has HHS offered any other standards it plans to hold the facilities to.”
Lind reported that HHS knew last fall that it was running out of space due to larger numbers of children coming to the border in search of safety, a pattern seen numerous times over the years. “Several times since 2014, a rise in unaccompanied kids coming to the US has led to a terrible bottleneck: kids are stuck in Border Patrol centers while HHS acts too slowly to expand their housing,” she tweeted. “By end of 2020, Hill/advocates were warning of a repeat.”
But HHS did not take action until Jan. 15, just five days before President Joe Biden’s inauguration. NBC News similarly reported on the Jan. 15 date. ‘"They were sitting on their hands,’ said one of the transition officials, who does not currently work for the Biden administration and spoke on the condition of anonymity,’” the report said. “’It was incredibly frustrating.’"
Following a visit to the so-called “influx facility” in Carrizo Springs, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro shared with Mother Jones what he learned from speaking to children held at the detention facility. Some of the kids he spoke to directly were as young as 13 and had fled violence in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala in search of safety in the U.S.
“We asked them what message they would send to the American people and to the president, and one of the young men said that they just wanted to be treated with dignity and that they were human beings,” Rep. Castro said. “And I think that gets lost in the issue of the border sometimes when we debate it, and it rises as a controversy; we can forget about the basic humanity of these people who are fleeing very violent, dangerous situations.”
