WALKING THE LINE
Blaz joins mayors at border, rips tent city secrecy
Mayor de Blasio traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border on Thursday with a group of mayors from around the country to denounce the separation of immigrant kids from their parents by the Trump administration.
Hizzoner spoke out in Tornillo, Texas — but was turned away when he and more than 20 other mayors tried to get inside the Tornillo Migrant Children’s Facility.
The visit came a day after de Blasio discovered at least 350 kids separated from their parents had been sent to a facility in East Harlem, some with lice and chicken pox from their time in federal detention.
“This is our federal government denying access, and not allowing information, and it’s not America. It’s crazy,” de Blasio said outside the gates of the tent city erected to house migrant kids in a small town near El Paso.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. These are public facilities paid for with taxpayer dollars. How on earth are we not allowed to see what’s happening to these children? It’s astounding, and it feels really un-American.”
De Blasio got nowhere with guards at the facility, asking, “Is there someone, sir, if it’s you or someone else, to talk to about an opportunity to see what’s going on?”
A guard wouldn’t give the mayor the time of day. “Sir, to my knowledge everybody’s unavailable,” he said.
President Trump signed an order Wednesday reversing his own policy of separating kids from parents caught crossing the border illegally, saying families should instead be held in detention together.
But there’s no immediate plan to get the more than 2,300 kids already separated back to their parents.
De Blasio said the crisis has hit home, with at least 239 kids still in the custody of Cayuga Centers in East Harlem, out of 350 who have passed through the facility in the past two months.
The mayor got that information from facility staff in a visit Wednesday. But there are more kids at other facilities in the city and elsewhere in New York state — and neither de Blasio nor Gov. Cuomo have been able to get a full accounting from the feds of how many or where they are.
“They don’t know when they’re going to see their parents again,” de Blasio said at a press conference in Texas before the detention center visit. “These kids have been traumatized. These kids are suffering physically and mentally.”
All of the children in East Harlem were separated from their parents by the government, the mayor said. None crossed the border on their own.
“It’s affecting our cities, too, now, so the notion that they don’t even want to talk to us, they’re not even going to give us any information, they’re not going to tell us what’s happening to these kids is unbelievable,” de Blasio told reporters.
His remarks were echoed by other mayors.
“Using children in order to deter or dissuade folks from coming to our border and
seeking asylum is unjust, it is wrong, it is immoral, and it is un-American,” said Austin, Texas, Mayor Steve Adler. “We are better than that.”
De Blasio said it was a positive sign that the uproar over child separations had forced Trump to sign the order. But the kids already taken from their families remain in limbo, and the policy of keeping asylum-seeking families locked up is controversial even when they’re housed together.
“The same energy that was put into separating the families he said. “What are they hiding? Why are they hiding?”
Trump has still stood by a zero tolerance policy, saying that everyone caught crossing the border illegally should face criminal prosecution. The mayors called for an end to that policy.
“There’s something eerie about a government agency saying, ‘We’re not going to let the media in, and we’re not going to let public officials in,’ ” de Blasio added in an appearance on MSNBC from near the border. “That would never fly in my city.”