Fresh from another trip to a Texas detention center, Sen. Jeff Merkley reminds Americans that children are being detained for extended periods, denied basic needs and separated from their families
Simply “do the math” to see how the Trump administration has manufactured the crisis at detention facilities holding migrant children, said Dr. Amy Cohen, a child psychiatrist who has visited these centers over the past year.
“Since 2017, the average length of stay has been two to three times longer than during the Obama administration,” she said Tuesday during a Democratic hearing on the treatment of children at the U.S. border. “If you keep children twice as long,” she said, “you will, in effect, have twice as many children in your facility. It is for this reason – and not some surge at the border – that the system has swelled and backed up, creating atrocities like Clint and Ursula; dismal places like Tornillo and Homestead.”
The hearing followed U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D-Ore.) most recent trip to McAllen, Texas, on July 19 where a dozen Senate Democrats, including Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) observed conditions.
“What we saw was a continuation of the administration using refugees and refugee children as pawns in their strategy of inflicting trauma in order to deter immigrants from coming to our border,” Merkley told Street Roots. “This is really troubling – every aspect of it – child separation; leaving children stranded in Mexico; holding children in ice-cold cells; leaving the lights on; not providing basic hygiene, health care, food and water; sending them off to a child prison in Homestead, Fla., where the for-profit prison is paid $750 a day to lock them up. It’s all a horrific way to treat children.”
Merkley will give a public briefing on border conditions at 10:30 a.m. Friday, July 26, at Terry Schrunk Plaza. He will be joined by local physicians who will discuss their work at the border.
Merkley said the crisis has never been about a lack of funding.
“The administration had plenty of money before, but they wasted it,” he said, adding that he’s afraid money from the recently passed $4.6 billion border aid package will be used in unintended and unauthorized ways rather than to improve conditions for migrants.
Merkley took the lead on introducing the Stop Cruelty to Migrant Children Act on July 11, which would remedy some of the issues at migrant detention facilities, such as inadequate food and legal counsel for children. It would also set standards for health and safety and stop the creation of new for-profit shelter and influx facilities, among other provisions. His legislation has co-sponsorship from 39 other Senate Democrats, but no support among Republicans.
“The (Trump) administration does not want Republicans to sponsor it,” Merkley said. “Instead, they’re asking the Republicans to eliminate the Flores restriction on locking up children to allow for their indefinite imprisonment, so I hope some of my Republican colleagues will look at this and go, they do not want to be associated with indefinite imprisonment of children – but that is exactly where they are right now.”
Under the 1997 Supreme Court Flores agreement, migrant child detention is limited to 20 days. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a bill that would extend that limit to 100 days. Merkley said he is confident Graham’s bill will be defeated in the Democratic-controlled House.
But the indefinite detention of migrant children, Merkley said, “is absolutely the goal of the administration.
“It has been since the president’s executive order in June of last year – he had a threefold strategy of going to the courts, enacting regulations or enacting a law to proceed to allow indefinitely locking up children. I have fought it in every possible way, and I am convinced we will continue to succeed in fighting it.”
EDITORIAL: Separating children from asylum seekers unconscionable (June 2018)
In Homestead, Fla., an influx facility that’s contracted to house up to 2,350 children is exempt from certain protections under the Flores agreement – including the time limit on child imprisonment.
The average length of stay there is more than two months.
“That means that (for) a lot of children who may be there a week or two,” Merkley said, “there’s other children who have been there for many months. And some of them were held in other facilities before they were brought to Homestead, so we’re talking a long period of time.”
He said the Trump administration has tried to cut off the supply of sponsors who would be able to take the children to more appropriate settings, such as homes.
“The administration decided that its single best election strategy was to inflame tensions over immigration. So the programs that were working, they put an end to them in order to make the problem worse,” Merkley said.
He pointed to the Family Case Management Program, which kept families out of prison by assigning a case manager at a cost of $30 a day.
“By having a case manager that is in constant contact with the family, they were showing up for 99% of their hearings, and that’s about as perfect as you’re ever going to get out of any program,” he said.
“It undermines the administration’s whole argument that when people are not locked up, they don’t show up, and that’s simply a big falsehood. And so they ended the program that was working so as to maintain the myth that they’re propagating.”
At the Democratic hearing earlier this week, immigration attorneys and others familiar with the conditions in detention facilities shared horrific stories about young children in filthy and soiled clothing, parasites, viral outbreaks and inhumane conditions at overcrowded detention centers.
“A 6-year-old’s face had tear streaks through the dirt,” attorney Hope Frye said. Other children, she said, scared and confused, were covered in mucus and vomit. Babies languished in soiled diapers, one wearing nothing more than a onesie in the cold.
Advocates also spoke of the frequent rapes, assaults and robberies – and in some cases, murders – that vulnerable migrants endure while stuck in unfamiliar Mexican cities as they wait for their asylum hearings.
Imelda Maynard, an immigration attorney with Catholic Charities of Southern New Mexico, explained that Trump’s so-called Remain in Mexico policy is, in reality, family separation under a different name. She said that many children are accompanied by an aunt or uncle, grandparent or sibling – in some cases fleeing the very people who murdered their parents.
“Unless you can prove you are the biological parent, your child will be taken away,” she said. At that point, the child is taken into U.S. custody and the guardian is sent to Mexico to wait. After a period of imprisonment, these children can eventually end up placed far away, in Chicago or New York, adding to the confusion and difficulty of the situation, Maynard said.
“Separation from trusted caregivers to whom they are attached is known to be the most extreme trauma a child can endure,” child psychiatrist Cohen testified. “It often results in something we call toxic stress, which impacts many systems of the body, the brain and the mind and can lead to irreversible damage – even early death.”
Michelle Brané, of the Women’s Refugee Commission, testified the administration’s strategy of deterrence is ineffective.
“A parent who’s fleeing and trying to protect their child’s life is not going to be stopped by harsh conditions,” Brané said, likening the situation to using a locked door to stop someone who’s fleeing a burning house; they will find another way.
Merkley told Street Roots he believes it will take a change of administrations to stop the incarceration of children at the border.
“This administration is deeply wedded to the idea of abusing children as a political strategy. It is evil and wrong. It is eating at the soul of America. But they are committed to it,” he said.
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites.
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