[ad_1]
The teenager with pigtail braids was leaning in a wheelchair and was holding a tight sweatshirt when an immigration lawyer met her at a complex of border patrols in Texas.
She opened the sweatshirt and the lawyer gasped. It was a tiny baby, born premature and placed in detention instead of being defended by the lawyer, in a neonatal care unit at the hospital.
"You are watching this baby and there is no doubt that this baby should be in a tube with a heart monitor," said Hope Frye, a volunteer from an immigrant advocacy group who travels the country visiting the facilities. Immigration with children to ensure that facilities comply with federal guidelines.
Frye and other advocates said the case highlights the poor conditions of immigration detention after crossing the US-Mexico border, while the government is occupying itself with unprecedented number of families and children arriving each day.
The 17-year-old Guatemalan mother had an emergency Caesarean section in Mexico early May and crossed the border with her baby on June 4, Frye said.
She was in a wheelchair in extreme pain when lawyers found her this week. The girl explained to the lawyers that she had crossed the border through the Rio Grande, but that she needed people to transport her and that she also needed help to get on in. a border police car when she was apprehended.
The mother and daughter were to be transferred Thursday to a private institution for minor immigrants without parents, after the outcry over social media.
They were held in an overcrowded McAllen treatment facility that houses hundreds of parents and children in large fenced areas and attracted international attention last year when it detained children separated from their homes. their parents. The lawyers describe them as cages and say that they are extremely cold. The converted warehouse is the same place where an influenza outbreak prompted the authorities to shut down the facility last month.
The Trump administration has been daily criticized for its conditions of detention in migrant detention centers.
Five children have died since the end of last year after being stopped by the Border Patrol. The immigrants stayed outside for long periods near a bridge in El Paso, under conditions that a professor who recently visited the place told Texas Monthly was like a "dog pound" .
A report from the Inspector General released last month revealed a severe overcrowding in an El Paso treatment center, with 76 migrants placed in a small cell designed for 12 people. The investigators saw immigrants standing at the top of the toilet to make room and find room to breathe because the cell was so tight.
In a letter to Congress this week, Kevin K. McAleenan, Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and Alex Azar, who heads the Department of Health and Social Services, called for additional funding. emergency.
"We continue to experience a humanitarian and security crisis on the southern border of the United States, and the situation is becoming more dramatic every day," they wrote.
The Customs and Border Protection Bureau said its officers were overwhelmed and lacked the funds and resources to deal with the influx. Health and Human Services, the government agency responsible for caring for unaccompanied children after their release from the border guard, said its staff was overwhelmed with more than 13,000 children currently in care. The agency plans to add new facilities for children in New Mexico, Texas and a military base in Oklahoma.
Migrant families and minors crossing the border are held in border patrol facilities that are supposed to be temporary and designed primarily for single men, not for mothers, newborns and sick toddlers. Families are regularly kept there much longer than the maximum allowed of 72 hours.
Frye met the teenager for the first time at the McAllen facility on Tuesday. The girl said the border authorities had her throw a backpack with the baby's clothes and gave her nothing else. The baby was so dressed in a dirty jacket, packed in a sweatshirt that another migrant mother had given him.
At one point, the baby became ill and was apathetic and insensitive, Frye said.
Frye said that the baby and his mother should never have been left there. She said she did not know how premature the baby was, but described the baby as "tiny", with a head "the size of my fist or smaller than my fist".
Customs and Border Protection, which manages the facilities in which the girl and the baby were detained, did not comment.
More stories to read absolutely Fortune:
– Democrats stand on USMCA as Trump revises Mexico's tariffs
-The story behind the Baby Trump balloon
-FCC takes important steps to limit automated calls and crooks
-Michael Bloomberg pledges $ 500 million to fight climate change
-Listen our new audio briefing, Fortune 500 per day
Stay tuned for your morning commute with Fortuneof the CEO Daily newsletter.
[ad_2]
Source link