Not in America
“There is a Stench” No Soap and Overcrowding in a Detention Center for Migrant Children – 6/21/19, New York Times
Families on the Border
America was justifiably outraged a year ago with the US policy of taking children from their parents at the border. Despite what the President repeatedly said and continues to say, it was new. The Trump Administration ordered the Border Patrol to re-interpret the law. Before, parents and children were kept together, and parents were released into the community, often with some kind of security device (ankle band.) Over ninety percent came back for their asylum hearings, determining whether they could stay in the United States or not.
The Trump Administration determined that the misdemeanor violation of crossing the border outside of the legal points of entry was now considered criminal (kind of like saying that speeding tickets get a prison term) and took children away from their “criminal” parents. The parents were then held in detention, prisons of one kind or another. The children were turned over to another agency, the Department of Health and Human Services. They were sent all over the country.
When the extent of the child separation program was revealed, it outraged US citizens. There were nationwide protests, and the President called the program off. But records weren’t kept properly, and it was difficult, if not impossible, to return all the children to their parents. The horror is, hundreds have not been reunited even today.
The New Reality
Now there is a new children’s crisis at the border. Parents in the Northern Triangle of Central America, faced with poverty and violence in their own countries, are paying to send their children to America for a chance at a better life. Most travel with older siblings, or aunts, uncles, and friends; some come with strangers. When they cross the border and are picked up, the Border Patrol, legitimately worried about child trafficking, separates the children from the non-custodial adults.
The system then is supposed to process the child, and place them with relatives here in the United States, or in foster care until their legal status can be worked out. The Border Patrol is not designed or prepared to care for kids, and is only supposed to hold the children for seventy-two hours: three days.
Kids in Detention
But the process is overwhelmed. Kids aren’t being held for three days, but for weeks.
They don’t have clean clothes, or soap, or toothbrushes. They are sleeping on cement floors, covered in aluminum foil blankets. Toddlers – Toddlers don’t have diapers, and the older children are trying to care for them. Meals, three of them a day, consist of instant oatmeal for breakfast, instant noodles for lunch, a frozen burrito for dinner, and a cookie and a juice box: every day.
The guards, and they are guards, not caretakers; are wearing full uniform, weapons, and face masks to cut down on the stench of unwashed bodies and soiled pants. The children are locked down, given little time, if any, to go outside. But even when they are let out, there is no “play,” it’s all about survival.
This is not a foreign country, some far away place where we can shake our heads at the inhumanity of it all. No, this is Clint, Texas, on the outskirts of El Paso, just down the road on I-10. There, and in several other Border “facilities” – all in the United States, WE are abusing children. It is WE – because these actions are taken by the United States Government in our name, supposedly for us.
Place Blame Later, Act NOW
If this were happening in another country, WE, the United States, would be screaming, sending aid, supplies, and caretakers. This is in Texas; why aren’t these children being taken to San Elizario High School nearby, for showers and care. Why aren’t they getting the free lunches being offered NOW at the school, much better than the instant noodles; why are they being held imprisoned like toddler convicts?
Is this some part of the “dis-incentive,” to deter families in Central America from sending their children to the United States? Is this Presidential Advisor Stephen Miller’s new brainchild, deterrence using kids? Or is this just an administrative nightmare, the result of a system overwhelmed by the changing demands of politicians, and the growing humanitarian crisis in the Northern Triangle that is spilling up to the US Border.
It doesn’t Matter
Call up Dr. Jeannie Meza-Chavez, the Superintendent of the San Elizario Independent School District. Get the districts buses, and get the kids out of “detention” and over to the high school. Have her ask her teaching staff for volunteers to help the kids get cleaned up, and changed. They are teachers, they will come. Call the Goodwill and Salvation Army Stores – there are several in the El Paso area. Get towels and clothes for the kids. Use the school’s free lunch program to get them some healthy food. Need some other stuff: there are twenty-two Walgreen’s in El Paso. That’s where to find toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap, shampoo, and diapers.
Then pull out the gym and wrestling mats and let those kids get some sleep.
Sure this will cost a few thousand dollars. But this is how WE respond to kids in trouble. WE don’t use kids as examples, or hostages to try to get something from Democrats in Congress, or deterrence. It takes the will to make one phone call, to Dr. Meza-Chavez. She will help – because wherever they came from, these are kids.
This is what Americans do. We don’t let kids suffer, whatever the reason.
Not here, not in America.
Post Script
Monday evening the updates said the kids in Clint were moved. Where, how, and what the new conditions are like we don’t know. While it now may not require the intervention of the local schools in Clint, it has simply shifted the problem to somewhere else, a Border Patrol “shell game.”
