Detained children in ‘prison’
Lawmakers unconvinced that immigration officials have ‘coherent plan’
MCALLEN, TEXAS— After touring a border processing facility on Saturday, Democratic lawmakers said they weren’t convinced the Trump administration had any real plan to reunite immigrant children separated from their parents by U.S. border authorities.
The delegation of 25 members of Congress visited a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility in the U.S.Mexico border city of McAllen, Texas. They described seeing children sleeping behind bars, on concrete floors and under emergency “Mylar” heat-resistant blankets.
Even when parents and children aren’t separated, they are often housed in adjacent cells that keep them apart, the lawmakers said. They added they hadn’t seen a clear federal system for reuniting those who were split up, since everyone — even infants — is assigned “A” or alien numbers, only to be given different identification numbers by other federal agencies.
“There are still thousands of children who are out there right now untethered to their parents and no coherent system to fix that,” Rep. Joe Courtney, a Democrat from Connecticut, told reporters after the tour. The remarks come amid an outcry over the Trump administration’s separation of immigrant families on the border. In recent weeks, more than 2,300 children were taken from their families under a “zero-tolerance” policy in which people entering the U.S. illegally face prosecution.
After the public response, U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered that they be brought back together. But confusion has ensued, with parents left searching for their children.
At an immigration detention facility in Port Isabel, Texas, attorney Jodi Goodwin has been trying to help reunite families. Another lawyer identified parents separated from their children at criminal court hearings in McAllen, and Goodwin then followed up with them in custo- dy to collect information about their cases and their children.
Goodwin said she has been inundated with requests from the parents, and the list is growing.
“Once you end up talking with one parent they tell you that there are 70 other parents in their dorm that are also separated and can I help them,” she said. “We haven’t tapped out on the number of adults that have been separated.”
She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement has asked her to share the information to assist in the process.
Demonstrations over the separation of families are planned for the weekend, including a rally Saturday in Fort Worth, where the Texas Democratic Convention is being held, and a protest in Homestead, Florida.
Also on Saturday, a group of immigrant rights protesters blocked a bus carrying immigrant children outside a U.S.Mexico border processing facility in McAllen, Tex.
Local and state police were called in to help disperse the crowd and enable the bus to proceed. The bus eventually left the area. Border patrol agents did not say where it was headed.
Tens of thousands of immigrants travelling with their families have been detained on the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years, many fleeing gang violence in Central America. About 9,000 such family units have been detained in each of the last three months, according to U.S. border authorities.
On Saturday, lawmakers on the tour in McAllen said they believed border agents were handling the situation as well as could be expected.
But Rep. Barbara Lee of California called what she witnessed “shocking and outrageous” and said the visiting lawmakers saw no evidence that children are receiving counselling or mental health care to cope with the stress of being in federal custody.
“It is, for all intents and purposes, a prison,” said Rep. Jackie Speier, of California