AP Exclusive: The Trump administration is keeping migrant children as young as 1 in hotels before removing them from the U.S. despite rules requiring most go to government shelters, documents obtained by AP show.
Lawyers and advocates say housing unaccompanied migrant children in hotels exposes them to the risk of trauma as they’re detained in places not designed to hold them and cared for by contractors with unclear credentials. They are challenging the use of hotels as detention spaces under the Flores court settlement.
In McAllen, Texas, people in scrubs went room to room on the fourth and fifth floors of the Hampton Inn caring for children, according to Roberto Lopez of the nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project. He walked through the hotel Friday, spotting a small child holding on to a gate in a doorway as an adult on the other side played with him. Lopez said he could hear the cries of at least one child in the hallway.
Castle Hospitality, which operates the McAllen hotel, said it didn’t know its rooms would be used to detain children until they arrived. The U.S. has the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world, and the virus is ravaging much of the West and South, including Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, where McAllen is located.
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