Tent cities for immigrant kids called immoral
White House considers housing thousands of children at military bases
AUSTIN, Texas – From El Paso to Abilene to San Angelo, local leaders and immigrant advocates in Texas questioned and decried a proposal last week to house immigrant children in tent cities.
The first “soft-sided facilities,” as the government calls them, already have been erected in Tornillo, Texas, a border town about 40 miles southeast of El Paso, said Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Around 360 children will be placed in the airconditioned units in the coming days and more could be added in the future, he said.
However, state Rep. César Blanco said the move is dehumanizing and tarnishes Texas’ tradition of welcoming immigrants.
Blanco and five other Democratic state lawmakers sent a letter to the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services last week, calling the idea of tent cities and separating families at the border “abhorrent and possibly illegal.”
“A tent city is not a place for children to be,” said Blanco, who represents El Paso and other stretches of the border. “That’s counter to the values not just of border communities but America in general.”
The Trump administration is considering using the controversial method to house between 1,000 and 5,000 children at military bases around Texas. Officials are evaluating Fort Bliss Army base just outside El Paso, Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene and Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo as potential sites.
The influx of unaccompanied minors largely stems from the administration’s new “zero tolerance” policy, which entails charging nearly everyone crossing the border without authorization with a federal misdemeanor.
By doing so, under law, children entering the U.S. alongside adults fall under the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s care while those criminal cases are pursued.
The agency is responsible for the care of 11,517 migrant children currently being held without a parent or guardian. An existing network of some 100 shelters in 17 states is at about 93 percent capacity, Wolfe said.
Backers of the policy say it will help stem the steady flow of illegal crossings at the U.S. southern border.
“Zero tolerance is necessary in this point and time,” said Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based non-profit research institute that promotes stricter immigration controls. “It’s clear that the previous policies were not doing the trick to deter illegal entry.”
Critics recall another ‘tent city’
But critics have denounced the policy that leads to separation of families as cruel and the prospect of tent cities as inhumane. And it’s also reminding them of former Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Tent City Jail” in Phoenix.
Civil rights advocates denounced Arpaio’s 2,000-bed tent city, saying it was inhumane and humiliating to house inmates in Arizona’s blistering 110-degree-plus heat.
Current Sheriff Paul Penzone ordered the facility closed last year as Arpaio faced obstruction of justice charges and multimillion-dollar lawsuits alleging racial profiling of immigrants.
A federal judge found Arpaio guilty of criminal contempt of court, but Trump pardoned the high-profile former sheriff before his sentencing.
Christian Ramirez, a San Diegobased human rights advocate, said he remembers touring Arpaio’s tent city as an observer and feeling concerned at what he saw: sweltering tents and inmates humiliated by the sheriff’s department.
“That was an extreme I thought I would never see again,” Ramirez said. “And those were adults. The thought that we’re going to potentially put children in these things is just devastating.”