Real abuses at border
Squalid conditions for detained migrants are worthy of all outrage Americans can muster.
A ticking time bomb.
That’s how a senior manager described the situation at a Border Patrol detention facility in the Rio Grande Valley, according to a report by the Office of Inspector General released this week. The independent watchdog’s findings describe squalid, overcrowded conditions at several facilities, where men, women and children are poorly fed and held without access to showers, sometimes for weeks.
The investigators’ words and images — men crammed together in standingroom-only cells, dozens of women and children lying side to side on concrete floors — support the testimony of doctors and lawyers who spoke out last week after interviewing immigrants in detention. They also lend credence to the stories Democratic lawmakers heard during a recent visit to a holding facility outside El Paso.
Some had dismissed these claims as politically self-serving, or as the embellishments of partisans and activists looking to gin up outrage. Turns out the government’s own reporting shows conditions at these detention centers are worthy of all the outrage Americans can muster.
Along with overcrowding, investigators found more than 800 of the 2,669 children in custody at the facilities had been held longer than 72 hours, violating a court settlement as well as Customs and Border Protection policy. This included a group of 50 unaccompanied children under 7, some of whom had been in these deplorable circumstances for over two weeks.
The excuse that the government has been overwhelmed by the number of arrivals, many asylum-seekers from Central America, has worn thin. During a previous increase under the Obama administration in 2014, mostly by unaccompanied minors, officials were also unprepared. Yet they quickly opened detention space across the country while officials made arrangements for the children to be released as quickly as possible into the custody of family or other sponsors. Although it was far from an ideal situation — this is where the first images of “children in cages” came from — it relieved overcrowding and sped up processing.
The numbers this time around are larger, but the response has been anemic seemingly, by design.
So far, the lack of urgency in easing these conditions fits squarely into the spirit of deterrence through pain that has been at the heart of U.S. immigration policies over the years, but which have hardened unconscionably during the Trump administration.
The need to quickly move detained immigrants from Border Patrol custody intensified on Monday, after some of the exchanges of a private Facebook group were released. As reported by ProPublica, group members, including current and former Border Patrol agents, posted racist, sexist and violent memes about immigrants and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
On an image of a migrant fording the Rio Grande while dragging a young boy in a plastic bag, group members wrote disparaging comments such as, “At least it’s already in a trash bag.” Under a photo of a father and his 23-monthold daughter who drowned in the river, the member who posted the image asked if it was fake because the “floaters” were so “clean.”
The revelation of the Facebook group comes on the heels of text messages between Border Patrol agents made public as part of an ongoing court case in Arizona, where an agent is accused of knocking down a Guatemalan man with his vehicle and then covering it up. In one exchange, the agent refers to immigrants as “disgusting subhuman s--- unworthy of being kindling for a fire.”
All these statements are vile and intolerable, but this isn’t just name calling. When these attitudes are brought to bear, they can mean the difference between life and death. Between ignoring the jugs of water that humanitarian groups leave for migrants in the desert or slashing and stomping them. Between taking cover with your fellow agents as rocks fly overhead from across the border fence or indiscriminately shooting into Mexico at anything that moves.
Of course, that side of Border Patrol is countered with the many agents who act humanely while fulfilling their duties, who put their lives on the line to protect immigrants and enforce our laws. But even some of the good actors are pressured to remain silent by a culture that protects its own, no matter the cost, while whistleblowers are ostracized.
Tolerance of these attitudes has gone on long enough.
The House Judiciary and Oversight Committees announced hearings next week into the conditions at detention centers. That’s a good start. The agents who violated policy, and basic human decency, should also be punished. And over time, leadership should not only set an example, but work to improve the culture at the Border Patrol, which for far too long has gotten away with little accountability or transparency.
Meanwhile, the time bomb keeps ticking.