Children are suffering in detention sites along border. We must do better.
NCYL files motion to remove kids from abhorrent conditions, draws major media coverage as Biden, Trump plot their policy plans
By Willis Jacobson, National Center for Youth Law Media Relations Manager
The stories and images are equal parts heartbreaking and infuriating.
Children huddled together in an overflowing porta-potty, desperate for refuge from the harsh cold, wind and rain. Families with kids forced to spend the night sleeping on dirt littered with garbage and home to scorpions and other wildlife. Children, including some with life-threatening conditions, routinely denied basic necessities like food, water and medical care.
While these scenes might sound like they come from a dystopian nightmare — the situation was indeed described by one aide volunteer as “apocalyptic” — they are very real, and very troubling, experiences shared by people being held in so-called Open Air Detention Sites (OADS) managed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection along the southern border. Many migrants, including children, who make their way to the U.S. in search of asylum are sent to these OADS in the California desert, where they are held for extended periods in absolutely brutal conditions.
The National Center for Youth Law, whose attorneys routinely interview young people in federal immigration custody and monitor the conditions in which children are detained, joined with other human rights’ organizations in filing a federal motion on Feb. 29 that seeks to end these abhorrent practices. The filing asks a judge to enforce requirements of the Flores Settlement Agreement, which establishes standards for the treatment of children in federal immigration custody, and to immediately transfer all youth to safe and sanitary facilities.
With so much attention being focused on the southern border — President Joe Biden and ex-President Donald Trump both visited sections of the border the same week as the OADS filing — it’s important that politics and rhetoric don’t overpower compassion and empathy.
To that end, it has been encouraging to see major media coverage that raises awareness of the sometimes devastating realities that asylum-seekers, many of them children, are forced to endure.
This CNN piece deftly explores the shockingly unsafe and unhealthy conditions at the OADS, highlighting several of the concerns expressed — and shared in the court filing — by advocates, volunteers, youth and parents. From that article:
[Aid workers] say dozens of children are still arriving to these sites without food, water or shelter.
In various locations along the border in the San Diego area, Thursday’s declarations allege, migrants are dropping from a 30-foot wall made of sharp-edged metal bars — some end up trapped between the primary and secondary border walls, unable to escape. In other locations, tents made from tarps by volunteers help protect against the heat or cold, but aid workers told CNN that the intense winds often blow them apart. The sites are littered with trash and at times filled with smoke from the fires migrants burn to keep warm. During rainstorms, the camps fill with mud and migrants struggle to stay dry.
That’s just some of the inhumane conditions detainees are forced to endure. People on-site have also described a heavy scent of human waste often permeating the OADS, where people are relieving themselves outside due to a complete lack of functioning restroom facilities; an omni-present fear of deportation that border agents use to silence complaints or pleas for help; and terrifying medical episodes.
More from CNN:
One aid worker described how a mother told him she had fallen from the border wall with her one-year-old daughter strapped to her back, but says the woman refused to seek medical attention for herself and her child at a hospital because a Border Patrol agent told her it could imperil their immigration chances. The declarations also described instances in which aid workers had to orchestrate emergency medical care for children in serious distress. Among them: an 8-year-old boy who suffered seizures after having his medicine taken away by Mexican authorities, an infant who was listless and vomiting and other children who appeared to be hypothermic.
This is unconscionable. Volunteers and aid workers have thankfully stepped in to help when they can, but the federal government can and must do more.
“Without the lifesaving support that volunteers have been providing for months, who knows how many children’s lives would have been lost. It is the responsibility of the government — NOT humanitarian volunteers — to ensure that these children’s most basic needs are met.” — Neha Desai, NCYL’s Senior Director of Immigration
Hopefully, the courts will step in and compel U.S. border officials to move youth out of these OADS and into facilities that are safe, healthy and respect their vulnerabilities as children.
Media coverage of the southern border, and related political posturing, is likely to remain high as the 2024 election season ramps up. Ill-intentioned propagandists are gathering at the border in Texas, dangerous bottlenecks are developing at the border with Arizona, and migrants continue to face deadly violence from U.S. border agents, among other ongoing issues.
Amid all the political debate and policy discussion, it’s vital that we value and prioritize the health, well-being and humanity of the people, many of them seeking refuge, who arrive at our borders. What we’re seeing now is simply, and tragically, unacceptable.
Willis Jacobson is the Media Relations Manager at the National Center for Youth Law. A member of NCYL’s Communications team, Willis strives to elevate NCYL’s work in the media and ensure that coverage involving NCYL’s focus areas — or any topics involving young people — is accurate, respectful and shared through an appropriate cultural and racial-justice lens.
