Trial to expose callous conditions of ICE sites

Under President Trump’s orders, the Department of Homeland Security is expanding a detention system that routinely deprives people of due process, basic human rights and human dignity.

From last year’s heartbreaking death of 7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin to the recent death of a 16-year-old boy in Texas, numerous instances demonstrate that the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement require greater oversight and accountability for their ongoing failures to keep those in their care safe. This should concern us all.

Dozens have died in immigration custody on this administration’s watch, already four people in this fiscal year alone. Thousands more are subjected to inhumane conditions on a daily basis, including in Tucson.

Last week, several of those individuals subjected to degrading detention conditions in southern Arizona took the government to trial. In the Doe v. Wolf case, individuals detained by the Border Patrol in Arizona will speak about their experiences of sleeping on cold concrete floors, being denied adequate medical care and access to basic hygiene facilities to clean themselves and being fed inedible food.

The conditions we’re seeing in Border Patrol facilities in Arizona, Texas, California and other parts of the country are exacerbated by an immigration backlog that this administration created through its counterproductive immigration policies, which criminalize immigrants instead of giving them an opportunity to seek the protection they so desperately need.

This administration doesn’t want to make our system work better, it wants to make the system so intolerable that it deters people from coming altogether.

Criminalizing immigrants has led agencies to detain them for longer periods of time in facilities that aren’t equipped to handle the quantity of people. As a result, asylum seekers and other migrants have been forced to endure inhumane, and even deadly, conditions, despite already making the trek thousands of miles to the U.S. border from their country of origin.

We’ve heard the same recycled excuses from Customs and Border Patrol about what’s led to these conditions. Instead of accountability, the Trump Administration’s punitive and inhumane policies have made the situation worse. Under Trump, agencies such as the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement operate without any transparency and oversight.

Disturbingly enough, this is all intentional. Trump and his cabal of anti-immigrant advisers like Stephen Miller want to make the circumstances so unbearable that immigrants simply give up fighting their case, even when they have a legitimate claim to remain in the United States.

Just last month, the government spending bill included a whopping $17.4 billion for Customs and Border Patrol alone, and it gave the president authority to transfer funds within Homeland Security that he’ll undoubtedly use for his border wall and to lock up even more immigrants.

Rather than address the bigger issues within our immigration system, this administration would prefer to use taxpayer money on a racist, ineffective wall while forcing people to endure inhumane conditions.

The Doe case will highlight data from Border Patrol that shows detention facilities aren’t meeting basic standards required by our Constitution. The trial will continue to expose the conditions in detention that threaten the safety of immigrants and our border communities.

This is not how the most powerful country in the world should treat anyone. We must demand accountability.

I stand with the asylum seekers fleeing violence and will continue fighting for greater transparency and oversight that will prevent these horrific conditions from existing in the first place. Those seeking hope and safety in the United States should not face violence and despair upon their arrival.

U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, a Democrat, represents Arizona’s 3rd District. On Twitter, @RepRaulGrijalva.