Category: Andrew Gumbel 

All day and night they listened to the wailing of hungry children.

Here, in a freezing immigration detention facility somewhere in the Rio Grande valley of south Texas, adults and children alike were fainting from dehydration and lack of food.

Sleep was almost impossible; the lights were left on, they had just a thin metallic sheet to protect against the cold and there was nothing to lie down on but the hard floor.

This is the account of Rafael and Kimberly Martinez, who, with their three-year-old daughter, had made the dangerous trek from their home on the Caribbean coast of Honduras to the US border to ask for political asylum.

“The conditions were horrible, everything was filthy and there was no air circulating,” Kimberly Martinez told the Guardian of the five days the family spent cooped up in one facility they – like tens of thousands before them – referred to as “la hielera”: the icebox. Her husband added: “It’s as though they wanted to drain every positive feeling out of us.”

They knew, from following the news, that their ordeal of escaping gang violence back home and trekking across desert terrain at the height of summer would not end when they reached the United States.

What they did not expect, though, were days of hunger, separation and verbal abuse that they said they endured at the hands of federal immigration officials.

‘Caged up like animals’

All they were given to eat, they said, were half-frozen bologna sandwiches, served at 10 in the morning, five in the afternoon and two in the morning, and single sugar cookies for their daughter. What water they were given had a strong chlorine taste – a common complaint – and upset their stomachs.

The Martinezes (not their real name) were among dozens of asylum-seekers the Guardian interviewed in the border city of McAllen recently after they secured their provisional release from federal custody – with black electronic monitors fastened tightly around their ankles – and just before they continued their journeys by bus to the homes of US-based sponsors to await court hearings on their statuses.

The Guardian sat in with a team of volunteer doctors and nurses administering emergency medical care and listened as family after family gave jarringly consistent accounts of what they described as grim conditions in a variety of border detention facilities – conditions that have grown only grimmer since the advent of Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies.

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Officials said the allegations made by families about their experiences in detention did not equate with what they knew to be common practice and they insisted detainees were treated with dignity and respect.

The “hieleras”, or iceboxes, asylum-seekers said, were overcrowded, unhygienic, and prone to outbreaks of vomiting, diarrhea, respiratory infections and other communicable diseases. Many complained about the cruelty of guards, who they said would yell at children, taunt detainees with promises of food that never materialized and kick people who did not wake up when they were expected to.

At regular intervals, day and night, the Martinezes, and many others, said guards would come banging on the walls and doors and demand that they present themselves for roll call.

If they talked too loudly, or if children were crying, the guards would threaten to turn the air temperature down further. When the Martinezes gathered with fellow detainees to sing hymns and lift their spirits a little, the guards would taunt them, or ask aggressively: “Why did you bother coming here? Why didn’t you stay in your country?”

“Many of these agents were Latinos, like us, but they were people without morals,” Rafael Martinez said, his voice choking with tears. “There we were, caged up like animals, and they were laughing at us.”

. . . .

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Read the rest of Gumbel’s shocking, disturbing, and downright infuriating report at the above link. If any other country treated vulnerable individuals seeking to exercise their legal rights to claim refuge under the Geneva Convention in this way we would call it just what it is — extreme cruel and inhuman treatment amounting to torture. Yet, somehow, the architects of this abhorrent, racist, wasteful, and dehumanizing system — Trump, Sessions, Miller, Nielsen, and others — remain free and largely unaccountable.

They even have the absolute audacity to whine and complain when Federal Courts occasionally call them out for their gross contempt for the law and Constitution and force them to take corrective action — which they do grudgingly, disrespectfully, without apology, and ineffectively.

Just today, “Gonzo Apocalypto” was sputtering about Federal Courts issuing nationwide injunctions against some of his corrupt, illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral practices. What a totally disingenuous jerk! I don’t remember Ol’ Gonzo complaining when a single Federal Judge in Texas, Judge Hanen, tanked Obama’s “DAPA” program that would have helped hundreds of thousands of deserving parents of US citizens and green card holders (and also helped reduce the Immigration Court backlog). Heck, Gonzo even tried to use that decision as the bogus justification for terminating DACA, a step that even Judge Hanen is not very anxious to take. Unlike Gonzo, Judge Hanen at least understands that DACA individuals have substantial equities in the United States that Congress would be wise to recognize through legislation.

Undoubtedly, there is a need for some detention of dangerous individuals or some so-called “flight risks” pending the completion of immigration proceedings. But, it is only a minuscule fraction of the number now being unnecessarily and wastefully detained.

And, there is seldom any reason whatsoever for detaining women and children who have passed the credible fear process and seek asylum. Work with the private bar to get them represented, help them understand the system, including their obligations to appear at court and when summoned by DHS, and work with the U.S. Immigration Judges, the private bar, and the DHS Offices of Chief Counsel to get these cases scheduled in a reasonable manner.

For every case that DHS seeks “priority processing,” they should be required to offer prosecutorial discretion or “PD” to a “lower priority” case. That would eliminate the current Government practice of “Aimless Docket Reshuffling” (“ADR”), keep the court backlogs from growing out of control, and insure timely and fair processing of recent arrivals. The DHS would also be “incentivized” to agree or stipulate to well-documented, clearly grantable asylum cases, as they are supposed to do. That’s how the system could and should work pending enactment of more comprehensive immigration reform.

Additionally, individuals who satisfy “credible fear” should be offered an opportunity to apply first to the USCIS Asylum Office, before the case is sent to Immigration Court, since that office would already have a “preliminary workup” of the case.

There are lots of ways of improving this system and making it work better for the asylum applicants, their lawyers, and the DHS. But, they aren’t going to happen as long as irresponsible, biased, ethically and morally challenged  “White Nationalist” officials such as Trump, Sessions, & Nielsen are in charge.

PWS

09-13-18