Attorney’s report slams conditions for migrant children at detention centers

SAN DIEGO — Attorneys who recently visited Border Patrol stations, ports of entry and family detention centers filed a scathing report this week alleging that the federal government is not adequately caring for minors in its custody.

Children and their parents interviewed by the attorneys described cramped cells where there wasn’t enough space or bedding to sleep, cold or frozen food and a lack of access to basic hygiene products like toothbrushes and soap.

The interviews were part of monitoring done through a court settlement called the Flores agreement that governs how long migrant children may be held in custody and under what conditions. After a San Diego federal judge ordered the Trump administration last month to reunite families separated at the border, the government tried to renegotiate the settlement to be able to hold children longer than 20 days, as the Flores agreement stipulates. The judge in the Flores case rejected the government’s argument.

In more than 1,000 pages of declarations with first-hand testimony from more than 200 parents and children held in custody in California, Texas and other states, the filing paints a vivid picture of the migrants’ first moments in the U.S.

Alejandra, a 31-year-old woman from Mexico, said she asked for asylum with her four children at the San Ysidro port of entry in early July.

Her family was taken into custody, but didn’t even receive a mat to sleep on, she told an attorney interviewing her, because there was no room.

“On the first night, my daughter wet herself while she was sleeping because there were so many people on the floor that you would have to walk over people to get to the toilet,” Alejandra said. “She couldn’t step over everyone.”

She told the attorney that the toilets didn’t have doors and there was no soap or paper towels.

She said she fled her home in Mexico because she was afraid her teenage daughter would be kidnapped at school.

The original complaint in the Flores lawsuit was filed in 1985, and the settlement has been in place since 1997. It allows attorneys to periodically inspect the conditions that children are held in. This is not the first time that attorneys representing the migrant children have said the government is not cooperating with the agreement.

Under the Obama administration, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of California ruled in 2015 that the government had breached the agreement in a number of ways including allowing rooms that were cold and overcrowded as well as providing inadequate nutrition and hygiene.

“As a matter of policy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection does not comment on pending litigation,” said Daniel Hetlage, spokesman for the agency, which is responsible for people in custody at ports of entry and Border Patrol stations. “However, lack of comment should not be construed as agreement or stipulation with any of the allegations. CBP takes all allegations seriously, and investigates all formal complaints.”