“They have never seen the sun”: lawyers describe conditions of overcrowding of children in border guards’ custody

A “staggering number” of migrant children held at a border patrol facility in South Texas are overcrowded, some being held for seven days, attorneys who interviewed them Thursday told CBS News.

Neha Desai, a lawyer representing young migrants in U.S. government custody, said she interviewed children who said they were hungry, as well as minors who only showered once every seven days.

“Some of the boys said the conditions were so overcrowded that they had to take turns sleeping on the ground,” Desai added, citing interviews with nearly a dozen unaccompanied migrant children held in the center. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention in Donna, Texas.

As of March 2, the Donna compound held more than 1,800 people – 729% of its capacity at the time of the pandemic, which is designed for 250 migrants, according to an internal CBP document reviewed by CBS News.

Most of the minors said they only showered once during their detention in the United States, even though they had been detained for more than five days, according to Desai. Some said they showered twice.

“They all said they wanted to shower more and were told they couldn’t,” Desai said.

As attorneys representing migrant children in the Federal Court case over the landmark Flores settlement agreement, Desai and his colleagues at the National Center for Youth Law have the right to question minors in the custody of immigration to the United States.

Desai said that she and one of her colleagues were only able to interview a few of the hundreds of migrant children held at the Donna center, a large tent complex designed to hold unaccompanied minors and families with children for short periods. Lawyers said CBP denied them a tour of the facility.

Donna’s facility, which opened last month, has been operating above its pandemic-era capacity for weeks, CBP acknowledged in a recent federal court filing. The facility held 854 children on February 21 and nearly 700 two days earlier, according to the court file, which also noted that social distancing “could not be observed at all times given the growing number of people in detention.”

Children interviewed included a young teenage girl detained in the United States with her baby and an unaccompanied 8-year-old girl. Some of the children who traveled with older siblings were even younger, Desai said.

“There were an overwhelming number of very young children,” she said.

Many of the children were visibly emotional, Desai said, especially siblings of different genders who had been separated and placed in separate sections of Donna’s facility. The young detainees, Desai said, also said they did not have access to outdoor activities. She said the children told her “how they never saw the sun”.

“One of them shared that he could only see the sun when he was showering, because you can see the sun through the window,” Desai said, noting that the children had raised this question during of their interviews outside the CBP facility.

The minors Desai spoke to also said they were refused phone calls to communicate with family members. “They were crying hysterically, wanting to talk to their family,” she said.

“We appreciate the extraordinary challenge the government faces in repairing the damage caused by the immigration policies of the previous administration,” Desai said. “That said, it is deeply concerning to see young children in institutions for days on end, unable to shower, call their families or see the sunlight.”

The Department of Homeland Security said border patrol officers were working to transfer unaccompanied minors “quickly and efficiently” to the US refugee agency, which Congress has tasked with housing these children.

“Tackling the flow of unaccompanied children crossing our southwest border is a high priority for this administration and DHS,” the department said in a statement to CBS News. “This requires a coordinated and sustained response from across government.”

In a call with reporters on Wednesday, acting CBP commissioner Troy Miller said his agency was “struggling” with the number of migrant families and children in its care. But he said CBP offered children access to medical providers, welfare checks, blankets, infant formula, hot meals and showers at least every 48 hours.

“A lot of us, maybe most of us, are parents,” Miller said. “I have a 6 year old myself, and these border patrol officers go above and beyond every day to take care of the children.

In an interview with Jorge Ramos of Univision, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said he saw “too many children” during his visit to the Donna center earlier this month. But he praised the border patrol officers for their “heroism”, saying the children were well taken care of.

“There are no children in cages in the United States,” Mayorkas said, according to a transcript of the interview.

A sharp increase in the number of unaccompanied minors in detention in the United States along the southern border has severely strained the government’s ability to deal with them, creating significant humanitarian and logistical challenges for the Biden administration.

Nearly 9,500 unaccompanied children were taken into custody at the US border in February – a record for 21 months, according to government data.

According to government figures obtained by CBS News, more than 7,000 of these minors have been transferred to shelters supervised by the Refugee Resettlement Office, which is responsible for accommodating them until a sponsor, usually a member of family in the United States, be localized.

With nearly 9,000 children currently in detention, the refugee agency is working to expand its bed space, which had been limited by social distancing measures. To accommodate more children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed those restrictions last week, citing “extraordinary circumstances.”

Lack of bed space and the increasing trend of unaccompanied minors entering U.S. detention has led to a traffic jam of migrant minors at border patrol facilities, most of which were built to briefly detain men. adults.

As of the start of the week, more than 3,200 unaccompanied children were stranded at border patrol facilities, according to CBP documents obtained by CBS News. Nearly 1,400 children had been detained beyond 72 hours, the legal limit for border officials to hand over unaccompanied minors to the refugee office.

Desai said the children she interviewed on Thursday echoed a similar sentiment about their time spent in border patrol custody.

“Several children have said the exact same sentence: ‘The only time I get up is to throw the garbage or go to the bathroom,'” she said.