A premature baby found in a border patrol in Texas



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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 small baby, born premature, placed in detention instead of where it should have been – a neonatal unit in the hospital.

"You're watching this baby and there's no question that this baby should be in a tube with a heart monitor," said Hope Frye, a volunteer from an immigrant rights group that travels the country visiting immigration facilities with children to ensure that they comply with federal guidelines.

Frye and other advocates believe the case highlights the poor conditions of immigration detention after the border crossing, while the government is dealing with an unprecedented number of families and children who arrive every day.

She says that the 17-year-old Guatemalan mother had an emergency Cesarean section in Mexico in early May and crossed the border with the baby on June 4th. 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 in the same place where an influenza outbreak forced the authorities to shut down the facility last month.

The Trump administration faces daily criticism of conditions in detention centers for migrants.

Five children have died since the end of last year after being stopped by the Border Patrol. Immigrants stayed outside for long periods near a bridge in El Paso, under conditions that a professor who recently visited the site, told the Texas Monthly, was like a "dog pound". And last month, a report by the Inspector General revealed a serious overcrowding inside a building. The El Paso treatment center, with 76 migrants placed in a small cell designed for up to 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 Service says its agents are overwhelmed and have neither the funds nor the resources to deal with this influx. Health and Human Services, the government agency responsible for caring for unaccompanied children after their release from the border guard, indicates that their home capacity has increased from 13,000 children to the present time. The agency has announced 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 backpacked with the baby's clothes and gave her nothing else. The baby was wearing a dirty blouse wrapped in the sweatshirt that another migrant mother had given her.

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 that she did not know how badly the baby was born premature, but that she was "tiny" and that her head was "the size of my fist or smaller than my fist".

The Customs and Border Protection Department, which manages the premises in which the girl and the baby were detained, did not comment.

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