No hope of an American Dream
Immigration Detention Centers have become a focal point in the news recently as information regarding the living conditions inside these centers have surfaced. Considering that these detention centers are being compared to concentration camps and torture facilities, we need to talk about exactly what is taking place inside.
Tens of thousands of families attempt to make their way across the border to America every year with the hopes of finding a better life full of greater opportunities. More than half of them find themselves being stopped in detained in facilities separated from their families for unknown amounts of time.
It is sad to think that people have such hopes of living this greater life, and yet their first experience in America is a prime example of how shitty they will be treated for time to come. Welcome to America! Here is your overcrowded cell, and we are sorry about the lack of privacy as well as the lack of beds, but you can always sleep on the concrete floor.
ABC10 has started this series called “Seeking Asylum” where they interview undocumented immigrants who have been held within the ICE detention facilities. In the video below, Eduardo tells his personal story about what it was like being held under ICE custody.
Eduardo states within the video: “I thought if I left my state in Mexico, I would be safe.” Many of these undocumented immigrants leave with the hopes of having a new life, yet they are thrown in these unsafe environments and held for unknown amounts of time.
Adults and children are held in these facilities for days, weeks, or even months. They have to bare extremely cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water or adequate food.
The conditions go as far as with no access to soap, toothpaste, or places to wash their hands or shower. People have even had to stand for days in the cell just due to the lack of space. A report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found that 900 people were crammed into a space designed to accommodate 125 at most.
Not only do detention centers feel like prisons for the immigrants being detained there, but many former officers have even said they feel like they became a robot due to the hierarchy that orders them. Officers were forced to follow orders that made them take beds away from children to make more space in holding cells. This was a part of a daily routine that is incredibly heartbreaking.
When you’re an adult you know how to care for yourself to make sure you’re healthy and ok, but as a child you are still learning how to care for yourself. Babies in these centers have to drink from unwashed bottles and there are not even enough diapers for everyone there. There have been multiple outbreaks of flu, lice, chicken pox and scabies which is not good for anyone to be around especially younger children.
The likelihood of children being separated from their parents and being cared for by complete strangers within the cells is quite high. Many of the undocumented immigrants who enter these facilities are not even accounted for which means once they are split up there is little hope of ever being paired back together.
Throughout the Trump Administration, 24 immigrants, including seven children, have died in U.S. custody, and these are the deaths that have only been accounted for. Maybe these deaths can be related to the fact that children, including INFANTS, as well as parents are dirty, sick, cold, hungry, and sleep-deprived. Yet as we have heard the media state, these people are under “reasonable supervision.”
America needs to build bridges, not walls. By detaining every American in look alike concentration camps, the last thing being built is a bridge.
