Conditions are squalid and deplorable. Some recent photos of the overflow being held in pens under a highway overpass: From CBS News:Jen Psaki admitted that #JoeBiden’s immigration policy was bringing more unaccompanied minors into the country.#ImmigrationReform #BidenBorderCrisis
— LionHearted (@LionInWinter44) March 14, 2021
Jen Psaki: ‘We Recognize’ Joe Biden Policy Changes Enticing Children to the Border https://t.co/tj4zYUOuaA via @BreitbartNews
"They never saw the sun": Lawyers describe overcrowded conditions for children in Border Patrol custody.
A "staggering number" of migrant children detained at a Border Patrol facility in south Texas face overcrowded conditions, with some held for as long as seven days, lawyers who interviewed them on Thursday told CBS News.
Neha Desai, a lawyer representing migrant youth in U.S. government custody, said she interviewed children who said they were hungry, as well as minors who only showered once in seven days.
"Some of the boys said that conditions were so overcrowded that they had to take turns sleeping on the floor," Desai added, citing interviews with nearly a dozen unaccompanied migrant children held at the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) holding facility in Donna, Texas.
On March 2, the Donna complex was holding more than 1,800 people — 729% of its pandemic-era capacity, which is designed for 250 migrants, according to an internal CBP document reviewed by CBS News.
Most of the minors said they had only showered once while in U.S. custody, even though they'd been held for more than five days, according to Desai. Some said they had showered twice.
"They all said they wanted to shower more and were told they couldn't," Desai said.
As lawyers representing migrant children in the federal court case over the landmark Flores Settlement Agreement, Desai and her colleagues at the National Center for Youth Law are entitled to interview minors in U.S. immigration custody.
Desai said she and one of her colleagues were only able to interview some of the hundreds of migrant children detained at the Donna facility, a large tent complex designed to detain unaccompanied minors and families with children for short periods of time. The lawyers said CBP denied them a tour of the facility.
The Donna facility, which opened last month, has been operating over its pandemic-era capacity for weeks, CBP acknowledged in a recent filing in federal court. The facility was holding 854 children on February 21 and nearly 700 two days before, according to the court filing, which also noted that social distancing "could not be observed at all times given the increasing numbers of individuals in custody."
The children interviewed included a young teenager in U.S. custody with her baby and an 8-year-old unaccompanied girl. Some of the children who traveled with older siblings were even younger, Desai said.
"There was a staggering amount of very young children," she said.
Many of the children were visibly emotional, Desai said, especially siblings of different genders who had been separated and placed in distinct sections of the Donna facility. The young detainees, Desai said, also reported not having access to outside activities. She said the children told her "about how they never saw the sun."
"One of them shared that he could only see the sun when he showered, because you can see the sun through the window," Desai said, noting the children raised this issue during their interviews outside the CBP facility.
The minors Desai spoke to also said they had been denied phone calls to communicate with family members. "They were hysterically crying, wanting to talk to their family," she said.
As of earlier this week, more than 3,200 unaccompanied children were stuck in Border Patrol facilities, according to CBP documents obtained by CBS News. Nearly 1,400 of the children had been held beyond 72 hours, the legal limit border officials have to turn over unaccompanied minors to the refugee office.
Desai said the children she interviewed on Thursday echoed one similar sentiment about their time in Border Patrol custody.
"Multiple kids said the exact same sentence: 'the only time I get up is to throw away trash or go to the bathroom,'" she said.This is the reality of Illegitimate Biden's America. Concentration camps for children!
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