The Border Patrol facility near El Paso, Texas, appeared to be mostly clean while being watched by hallway monitors. It has been less than a week since reports of them living in squalid conditions emerged with little care and inadequate food, water and sanitation.
Lawmakers and activists have been calling these centres 'detention camps', urging the Trump administration to take action. Journalists were offered a glimpse inside the centre by officials for the first time since lawyers who met with young migrants said, saw 250 infants, children and teens locked up for up to 27 days in what was designed to be a short-term holding facility.
The state of health and safety conditions in these facilities are questionable. US member of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an Instagram Live last week, "The United States is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are." Following up on Twitter, she added that the detention centres have "brutalised" migrants, children included, with "dehumanising conditions."
Last year, Border Patrol spent a little more than $1,000 a day on supplies for migrants being held across the El Paso sector, Aaron Hull, chief said.
This year, because of the increase in number of migrants and the backlog, the agency is spending $4,000 a day just to buy enough food, medicines and other supplies for the Clint facility. The cost has risen to $61,000 a day, Across the El Paso sector. A facility in South Texas is being cleaned, says Health and Human Services, which will soon be able to hold 1,300 migrant children.
As per reports, children in the holding have been kept without toothpaste, sanitary necessities like soap or adequate space to sleep. There'd be at least one 2-year-old in these places, who would've wet his pants and with mucus smeared on his shirt.
Lawyers are also asking for the prompt release of children to parents or close relatives and for the government to be found in contempt of court. "That is, extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water, or adequate food," said Dr Dolly Sevier. She added that no child should be held in the facilities even for the minimum of 72 hours "because it is obvious that the dignity and well-being of children is not even an afterthought in the design of the centre."
Sevier, a paediatrician visited with 39 detainees at another Border Patrol centre in McAllen, Texas, all but one of them minors, and performed medical exams on 21 infants and children on June 15. She described the conditions as dire, and said many of the detainees were teen mothers. Four children, under the age of three had to be hospitalised while being held at a Border Patrol station at MacAllen, Texas.
At the Clint centre, the guards were seen getting the older children to take care of the younger ones. Since September, six children have died while in immigration custody.
"This is not a detention centre. It's a holding area," said Aaron Hull, chief of the El Paso Border Patrol sector, which encompasses all of New Mexico and parts of West Texas. He added that the Border Patrol is not built, staffed or funded to handle longer-term stays.
Children are also being transferred from one Border Patrol facility to another, despite concerns over health and safety conditions in centres, according to sources. Customs officials denied allegations that the children weren't given enough food or clothing.
Children who are being given bunk beds to sleep in, with a bathroom area that is being separated by a wall, sat together, talking, braiding each other's hair or sometimes kicking around a football, officials said.
While the only warm meals were the ones being cooked in a microwave, the children were being given burritos and had unlimited access to snacks, they added.
US agencies have been scrambling to find adequate facilities for migrants streaming across the border with Mexico, and the Border Patrol has been detaining some children for weeks as opposed to the court mandated 72 hours, because the US Department Health and Human Services said it doesn't have the capacity to take them.