Outrage grows over conditions at border facilities

Angry protesters taking to streets and social media

Associated Press

“Inhumane.” “Shameful.” “Intolerable.” “Brutal.” Mounting revelations about squalid and dangerously overcrowded conditions at Border Patrol holding centers have fueled public outrage heading into the Fourth of July weekend, with protesters taking to the streets and social media to decry the situation as un-American and unacceptable.

The swelling furor over President Donald Trump’s immigration polices comes as the administration said Wednesday that it is looking for more properties to permanently hold unaccompanied children who cross the border. Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, called that troublesome given the government’s “track record on abuses and child neglect that we have seen nationally.” Atlanta is one of five potential locations for new facilities to hold up to 500 children.

“I don’t think that this administration is capable of administrating a program in a humane way,” Gonzalez said.

Headlines and searing images made public in past days and weeks have served as a stark reminder for Americans far from the border of a crisis for which solutions seem scarce: An immigrant father and daughter drowned in the Rio Grande. Reports that infants, children and teens have been locked up without adequate food and water. Revelations that five children have died in Border Patrol custody since December.

The Homeland Security Department’s internal watchdog provided new details Tuesday about severe overcrowding in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, noting children at three facilities had no access to showers and that some children under age 7 had been held in jammed centers for more than two weeks. Some cells were so cramped that adults were forced to stand for days on end.

Government inspectors described an increasingly dangerous situation, both for migrants and agents, with escape attempts and detainees clogging toilets with socks to get released during maintenance. A “ticking time bomb,” in the words of one facility manager.

The report echoed findings in May by the department’s inspector general about holding centers in El Paso, Texas: 900 people crammed into a cell with a maximum capacity of 125; detainees standing on toilets to have room to breathe; others wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks.

All of that is reverberating: Hundreds have protested this week from Rhode Island and Vermont to Texas and California, as cries to #CloseTheCamps take root on social media. About 50 demonstrators from a Jewish group congregated Wednesday outside a jail in Orange County where immigration detainees are held. Some locked arms and blocked the facility’s entrance. Then they sang and prayed for immigrant children who have died in government custody.

“The Jewish community has benefited a lot from this country as an immigrant community, and we have an obligation to make sure torture doesn’t happen and that borders remain open to people who are seeking refuge from violence and poverty,” said Aryeh Cohen, a rabbi and professor who joined the protest.

Still more demonstrations were planned for the July 4 holiday, including one being organized in Philadelphia by Jewish activists likening the detention of migrants to the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany.

It all comes as Trump promises the “show of a lifetime” for the hundreds of thousands of revelers who flock to the National Mall every year on the Fourth of July. Tanks are in place for the display of military muscle.