American Journalist
The Marshall Project
Senior Data Reporter
The Marshall Project
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/16/border-patrol-migrant-children-detention-00039291
‘No Place for a Child’: 1 in 3 Migrants Held in Border Patrol Facilities Is a Minor
Thousands of kids have been routinely detained in cold, overcrowded cells built for adults, while authorities have resisted improving conditions.
By ANNA FLAGG and JULIA PRESTON
06/16/2022 04:30 AM EDT
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Anna Flagg is The Marshall Project’s senior data reporter.
Julia Preston is a contributing writer at The Marshall Project.
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
During their harrowing journey from Venezuela to the Texas border, the three Zaragoza children liked to imagine the refuge they would find when they reached the United States, a place where they would finally be free from hunger and police harassment and could simply be kids
Instead, when they reached the border in March, they were detained — dirty with mud from the Rio Grande and shivering with cold — in frigid cinder block cells. They spent sleepless nights on cement floors, packed in with dozens of other children under the glare of white lights, with agents in green uniforms shouting orders.
The siblings were booked by officers who asked questions they didn’t understand and were told to sign documents in English they couldn’t read. Even after their release three days later, they feared the U.S. would never be the haven they had longed for.
Since early 2017, one of every three people held in a Border Patrol facility was a minor, a far bigger share than has been reported before now, according to an analysis by The Marshall Project of previously unpublished official records. Out of almost 2 million people detained by the Border Patrol from February 2017 through June 2021, more than 650,000 were under 18, the analysis showed. More than 220,000 of those children, about one-third, were held for longer than 72 hours, the period established by federal court rulings and an anti-trafficking statute as a limit for border detention of children.
For most young migrants crossing without documents, the first stop in the U.S. is one of some 70 Border Patrol stations along the boundary line. The records reveal that detaining children and teenagers has become a major part of the Border Patrol’s everyday work. The records also show that conditions for minors have not significantly improved under President Joe Biden. While the numbers of kids in Border Patrol custody peaked in 2019 under former President Donald Trump, they rose again when Biden took office and have remained high.
Those numbers could surge to new highs when the Biden administration eventually lifts Title 42, a public health order that border authorities have used for more than two years to swiftly expel most unauthorized border crossers, including many children.
But the Border Patrol has resisted making changes to its facilities and practices to adapt to children, even while officials acknowledge that the conditions young people routinely face are often unsafe.
“A Border Patrol facility is no place for a child,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the nation’s highest immigration official, has repeatedly said. However, even now, as authorities are scrambling to beef up enforcement and expand detention capacity in preparation for a post-Title 42 influx, the Border Patrol’s basic approach to kids remains the same: Just move them out of custody as fast as possible.
Without broader changes, many thousands of kids seeking protection will remain at risk for harsh, demeaning and sometimes dangerous treatment as their first experience of the United States.
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Read Anna’s and Julia’s complete, disturbing, infuriating report at the link. Unnecessary, immoral, inappropriate, and just plain stupid and evil! Did I mention stupid and evil?
Thanks, in part, to the Trump Administration’s policies of racist child abuse masquerading as “immigration enforcement,” there is a large body of recent, available, accessible empirical data on the devastating effects on children, families, society, and our world’s future of immigration enforcement that targets children, teens, and other vulnerable groups!
The “perps” of these repulsive policies will “check out” at some point in the future. The Biden Administration, which pledged to do better but disgracefully hasn’t delivered, also can’t and should not escape accountability.
The damage they are inflicting on future generations and the ability of our world to harness and utilize in a cooperative fashion the “human capital” needed for our planet’s and humanity’s survival is totally unacceptable! People of intelligence, courage, energy, innovation, and compassion must work together to stop this disgraceful abuse. Those chosen as responsible leaders and officials in the future must represent “our better angels!” 😇
While those of us in the “senior generation” who believe in social justice and a better future for humanity will continue the fight, our “time on the stage” is inexorably winding down. It will be up to the NDPA and the rest of the upcoming generation — in America and elsewhere — to decide what kind of world they want to live in and what they are willing to do, and sometimes sacrifice, to make it happen.
As I have said many times: “We can diminish ourselves as a nation, but it won’t stop human migration!”
It’s past time for a better, more realistic, more human, and “robustly humane” approach to human migration!😎 One that focuses on the long-term welfare of children and society, NOT short-term mythical “enforcement goals” or fears!
🇺🇸Due Process Forever!
PWS
06-20-22