“They put us in a refrigerator and interrogate us”: the harsh conditions that migrant children in detention centers in the United States experience.
The United States has a vast system of detention centers spread across the country, housing more than 20. 000 migrant children. A special investigation by the BBC uncovered allegations that the rooms are kept at low temperatures, illnesses, neglect, lice and dirt, through a series of interviews with children and staff at the centers. 453
It was midnight on the Rio Grande, the mighty river that forms the border between Texas and Mexico , and the lights they began to flash on the Mexican side. Voices could be heard in the dark. Figures appeared, got into a small raft and began to cross the river.
When the raft appeared on the American side, the faces of the migrants became visible. More than half of them were children. During March and April, more than 36. 10 children crossed into the US without the company of an adult. This was a record in recent years.
Many children traveling alone set out on their journey hoping to reunite with a parent who is already in the US. . More than 80% of them already have a relative in the country, says the US government.
President Joe Biden has opened the border to unaccompanied children seeking asylum, relaxing a bit the policy of former President Trump to reject migrants due to COVID – 19.
The children clambered up the banks, exhausted. Two young cousins held hands. Another young man, Jordy, from 17 years, he says he had fled Guatemala out of fear of the violent gangs that operate there.
But tonight, he was scared by what might await him in the migrant detention centers in the US He says he had heard stories about them. “They will put us in a refrigerator and ask us questions”, adventure.
The so-called “refrigerators”, Notorious among migrants, these are extremely cold rooms or cubicles at the U.S. Border Patrol’s migrant processing facility.
Jordy says he left his country to escape from gang violence.
Jordy was told to join a line with other children. Guards at U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were removing children’s shoelaces and belts, a process generally reserved for inmates to prevent them from trying. take his own life.
Jordy and the other children were taken by bus at night. They had to join more than 22 . 000 migrant children who are detained in the US, in a series of extensive camps across the country. At least 14 of these centers are new.
In late March, CBP released disturbing images showing crowded conditions inside a private facility operating in Donna, Texas – A mass of huge white tents looming over the small town. The facility was designed to house 250 people, but housed more than 4. at its time of maximum occupancy.
This is what Downtown Donna looked like in March. The rooms are separated by plastic sheets.
Journalists have not been allowed to speak to children inside. That is why we have been tracking the children who have been released, to find out about the conditions at US detention sites.
Ariany, age 10, who crossed to the US alone, passed 22 days detained this spring, most of that time at Donna’s campsite. She was crammed into a plastic cubicle, like many other children, from toddlers to teenagers, wrapped in a silver emergency blanket.
“We were very cold,” he said. “ We had no where to sleep, so we shared mats. We were five girls on two mats. ”
Ariany finally reunited with her mother, Sonia, at the end of March.
She had passed on her mother’s contact details to US officials who were able to locate her. Sonia had fled Honduras six years ago with her son due to gang violence, leaving Ariany, who was too young at the time to make the trip, with her older sister.
Cindy, from 16 years, also arrested in Donna this spring, recounts that there was 80 girls in her cubicle and that she and most of the boys were wet under the blankets, due to leaking pipes.
“We all woke up wet,” she explains . “ Dorm day We stand sideways, all hugging, to keep warm “.
Cindy was detained in a cubicle with other 73 girls.
Several children, including Ariany and Paola, a young woman from 16 years that she was also freed from Donna, they told the BBC they were given Food expired, rotten or not cooked properly .
We were told that many children got sick.
“Some girls fainted,” said Jennifer, who had 17 years at the time of his arrest.
Some of Donna’s girls were able to shower once a week, but others said that did not shower for several weeks in a row. Paola had a hard time living with dirt.
“I started to feel that my head was itching and I realized that it was not normal. They checked my head and told me I had lice. ”
With children eating and sleeping in tight spaces, cubicles quickly became unsanitary. Ten-year-old Ariany says the guards threatened the children if they didn’t keep their cramped rooms clean.
they were going to punish us by leaving us there for more days ”, he recalls.
At night, the children say, the tents were filled with the sound crying .
“We all cried, starting with the little ones. There were two-year-old or one-and-a-half-year-old babies crying because they loved their mother ”, says Cindy.
Paola says she tried to help the little ones, but She was also worried that she herself might never be reunited with her mother.
Paola, from 16 years, she feared she would never be reunited with her mother.
“They were crying in front of me, and I was just trying to comfort them and tell them that one day we would get out of there, although sometimes inside of me I had doubts, because He did not ask me for my mother’s number, her address, and I also felt bad, “he says.
300 Flights for thousands of children
And then one day, Cindy started feeling sick. Gave positive for c ovid – 19, as well as a surprising number of detained migrant children.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ) reports more than 3 . 10 coronavirus cases among migrant children only in Texas since last year. The total number of cases in the new emergency detention centers across the country is unknown.
Finally, Cindy, without being told where she was going, was transferred with others 36 children with covid by bus, then by plane and flew to 2. 400 miles to San Diego, California.
They were taken to a new place of detention, a convention center with capacity for almost 1. 500 children and with flimsy camp beds.
Cindy says she was kept away from healthy children, in a section full of children with covid. He says conditions were better there than at Donna, but it still took several days for him to shower.
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Who are the children?
The persecution, gang violence and organized crime, losses from natural disasters (including two hurricanes in Central America in 2020) and poverty are causing parents to send their children to seek refuge in the U.S. Migrants are vulnerable to exploitation and sexual abuse along the way
Most are adolescents from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador , although some are reported to be as young as 6 or 7 years old
They are sent by relatives alone or with human traffickers s that charge thousands of dollars, although reports suggest that some families accompany children to the border and then send them alone to improve their chances of entry into the U.S.
The majority and you Jan relatives in USA ., of which approximately half is a parent
Only the 4.3% of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum have been deported since 2014
Every day, flights depart from US border cities loaded with children.
“Some days, we estimate that hundreds of children are being transported across the country on these flights,” says Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border, an organization that tracks flights. .
Migrant children are transferred by plane to other centers.
In recent weeks, the authorities sac aron about 3. 000 children from the Border Patrol facility in Donna, transporting many to a new network of child detention centers across the country run by HHS, including the site to which Cindy was transferred in San Diego .
There are at least 14 of these facilities, known as S locations from to release of E emergency (EIS, at military bases, convention centers or stadiums in major US cities These are part of a network of 200 detention centers for migrant children distributed in 22 state.
This means that Donna is much less crowded now, (the camp is home to some 300 kids ). The facility is being expanded as the influx of migrants across the border continues.
One of the new Emergency Admission Sites is the Kay Conference Center Bailey Hutchinson in Dallas who has 2. 250 folding beds installed in a grid system in a Big room. At its peak, it housed hundreds of adolescents between 13 Y 17 years.
Staff working in downtown Dallas say they have had to sign nondisclosure agreements that specify that they cannot talk about what happens inside.
Some children “have contemplated suicide”
But some agreed to speak with us on condition of anonymity.
“Children always complain about not having enough, of not eating enough “, says one of the employees.
He also said that the convention hall was cold, that the children had a thin blanket each and that they were forced to stay next to their beds d e campaign almost all day.
“The kids have been there for 45 days in a row without sunlight, without recreation outside, without fresh air, without anything ”, he adds.
The moment when Ariany was finally reunited with her mother and brother
Account that the children only gave 30 minutes of recreation twice a week in an indoor room and many had been in the convention center for weeks.
“Everyone is depressed . I heard the other day that several were contemplating suicide due to the conditions here. ”
“ They are being treated like prisoners , as prisoners ”, he adds. “It is disturbing that this center has not been able to meet the minimum standards of care for unaccompanied minors.”
In response to allegations of neglect of migrant children in the new detention centers, the Department of Health and Human Services noted: “Children are provided a safe and healthy environment with access to nutritious food, clean clothing, comfortable beds, education, recreational activities, and medical services.”
“The Dallas EIS (Emergency Intake Site) provides the required standards of care,” says the statement.
“The entire administration is working together to reduce the time children are in federal custody by making reunifications our top priority,” he adds, noting that the number of children in HHS care has more than doubled.
Children are released regularly, but for many it is a very slow process. Average detention time in emergency centers is one month.
The largest Emergency Intake Site is a tent facility at the military base of Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, which is home to more than 4. 453 children in the scorching desert. It has a capacity for more than 10. 000.
An inside source has told the BBC that some of the tents contain between 500 Y 800 sleeping girls and boys in long lines of bunk beds.
The source noted that hundreds of children are in isolation from covid and there are now designated tents on the site for scabies and lice , of which there are also outbreaks.
Sources say that living conditions They are unsanitary and that there has been at least one report of sexual abuse in the girls’ store. An official document indicates that children under the age of 6 can be sent to Fort Bliss.
HHS did not respond to a request from the BBC to respond to these allegations.
Agony on the border
Amy Cohen, a psychiatrist who lives across the country in Los Angeles, has over 30 years of experience working with traumatized children.
She says the alleged conditions in the camps could be extremely harmful to those inside.
“Even after weeks Under these conditions, many children are at increased risk of developing major psychiatric illnesses later in life, an increased risk of substance abuse and an increased risk of suicide “, he explains.
Cohen co n considers that these migrant children could be even more vulnerable because many were separated at the border from a family member who was not their father or mother, or someone they trusted as a family member.
It also says that parents were forced to make the decision to separate from their children, because the families that are rejected they often send their children alone to the other side of the border, instead of risking their well-being in dangerous cities along the Mexican border.
There, he says, They are vulnerable to rape, trafficking and assault.
“So these parents, when they realize that they cannot protect their children, they end up feeling compelled to send their children alone to the other side of the river to preserve their lives. ”
Cohen says that although border guards no longer physically separated children from their biological parents, as had happened during a t ime under the so-called “zero tolerance policy” of former President Trump, the family separation process was deeply psychologically damaging.
“I interviewed children who were separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy … and I interviewed many children who have now been separated from aunts, uncles and brothers … I’m seeing exactly the same trauma in these children now as we saw in those children then. ”
The CPB told the BBC that, under federal law, any child who Arrives without a parent or legal guardian is considered unaccompanied and must be transferred to HHS without the adult relative.
In addition, it was announced last week that the US will also process 250 current asylum seekers who are considered particularly vulnerable.
Many children travel to reunite with their family, fueled by a widespread rumor that Biden has taken great strides to welcome immigrants and reverse his predecessor’s immigration crackdown.
Republican Beth Van Duyne, Congressman for Texas, said Biden’s policy of allowing children to cross the border alone is to blame for the crisis.
“[La administración] is absolutely encouraging the separation of families, “he argued.
” None of these centers is equipped to care for children, “added Van Duyne, who has visited at least two of the state’s detention centers.
But Democratic Congresswoman Sylvia R. Garcia, who has visited multiple sites, says the government has taken important steps to improve rar the conditions of children.
“Yes, there are [problemas], but I tell you that, according to what I am seeing and those I have visited, the administration is doing much better than before when the increase began, because they were not prepared for such a quantity and they did not have the facilities, and now they have them ”.
Children are being “unnecessarily traumatized”
The core of the problem is that the number of migrant children arriving in the country. whether with their families or alone, has increased steadily over the last decade and the US n o have an efficient system to reunite migrant children with their fa in the US, critics say.
“Children arriving in the US are being unnecessarily traumatized due to the long-standing failure of the US to build a modern border management system that recognizes the migration trends of the 21st century, ”says Warren Binford of Willamette University School of Law.
Ariany, the girl of 10 years she was held in Donna’s tents for weeks, she later drew pictures when she was in another shelter, of hearts and flowers.
Sonia says her daughter is changed.
“I did them because I was sad,” he tells us. He showed us the words that he had written in Spanish in his drawing. “He says, ‘I love you, Mom. I love you all. ‘”
Ariany’s mother says her daughter, who was once a cheerful and sociable child, has changed since she was detained. “She is very quiet, she barely speaks. She can’t stand children around her right now. ”
“The children that concern us the most are those who remain silent ,” he explains. Amy Cohen, Child Trauma Specialist. She says the danger, particularly for younger children, is that “trauma goes underground, settles like landmines below the surface.”
Now Ariany has nightmares. “He is very afraid to go to sleep. She wakes up crying, screaming ”, says her mother Sonia.
Paola says she cried when she came home at any time of the day and night, and she also had difficulties to to sleep.
“I don’t think anyone in this country … deserves to be treated like this.”
“Sometimes I pretended to be strong, because in this life you have to be strong. But this type of thing leaves our hearts marked, because even if we overcome it, we will always remember it. ”
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