In cells built for adults, one-third are child migrants. Border authorities have resisted improving conditions for minors in crowded, freezing facilities. Read more from MarshallProj:
Officials are well aware that most Border Patrol stations were built like police lockups, with crude cells designed for a time decades ago when the majority of migrants apprehended for crossing without authorization were adult men, who were likely to be held briefly and rapidly deported.
In interviews with legal services groups, young migrants described being kicked awake in the morning by agents in Border Patrol holding cells. “They scared us when they shouted,” said J.N., a 16-year-old girl from El Salvador. “We were afraid they would come in and kick us.”hile migrant children have been held at many different Border Patrol facilities, their accounts of the conditions are strikingly consistent.
Three men returned across the Rio Grande to Mexico, shortly after another group of unauthorized migrants crossed the river boundary and reached the U.S. bank at Del Rio, Texas. Belongings, including wet clothes, were discarded near the river by people who had crossed over to Texas. In Del Rio in March, one of the Zaragoza children, Alejandra, 11, recalled to The Marshall Project that the Border Patrol station provided only Mylar sheets for cover. Alejandra said she had lost her only jacket in the river.
From left, siblings Alejandra, Nellysmar and Derek; and their father, Alberto Zaragoza, in a yellow shirt; waited at a gas station in Del Rio, Texas, for a bus to San Antonio. Dozens of people spend each night here, since there is no overnight shelter for migrants in Del Rio.Another Venezuelan family, Diana Obispo Ortega and her three daughters, said they were held for five days at a different facility in the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, in a tent for families.
Among Border Patrol officers, frustration has simmered over the responsibilities they have for dealing with children, when the agency has given them little training or support to meet the demands for child-oriented care. In every month so far this year, stations across the border have been full beyond their 5,000-person total daily capacity, with more than 16,000 migrants in custody on some days, Chief Ortiz said, crowding the spaces for children. “It’s not going to be as comfortable as they would like,” he said.left, Valentina Mendoza, 10, of Venezuela, waited with her mother, Andreina Cordero, and stepfather, Leonardo Pirela, under a bridge for a bus to transport them to a Border Patrol processing facility.
The administration raced to establish emergency processing centers to take kids from the stations, and to expand the health department shelter system. But in spite of all the resources and high-level attention expended on that crisis, little was done at the time to upgrade Border Patrol facilities to accommodate children. The opportunity was lost.
M.J. had been injured in the last days of her journey across Mexico. She leapt from a moving freight train, landing on her shoulder in a bank of rocks, M.J. said in an interview in California in March. A physician gave her a sling and prescribed a painkiller. After she was returned to the detention facility later that day, M.J. said, a guard took away the new sling. She never received the medication.
A crowded holding cell for women in a Border Patrol station in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas on July 15, 2021. Because of the cold temperatures maintained in these cells, they are widely known as hieleras, a word for icebox in Spanish.But pressures for change have been intensifying. During the Trump administration, Customs and Border Protection was jolted by several deaths of children in its custody.
Drawing on $1.4 billion Congress authorized to supplement border enforcement, CBP is considering plans for two new family centers with no hard-cell detention at all. They would combine government agencies and non-profit groups in one location, to launch children and families on their immigration cases and organize their safe release.
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