LogFAQs > #924610298

Critically Ill

https://www.newsweek.com/migrant-detention-center-conditions-child-separation-abuse-trauma-trump-1449043

Elora Mukherjee, the director of Columbia Law School's Immigrants' Rights Clinic, recently interviewed 70 detained migrant children in Clint, Texas. They were so dirty they had a stench, she says, and was unable to be near them without feeling ill.

Over the course of three days, Mukherjee said she witnessed inadequate bedding, clothing, and saw no hygiene tools like soap, toothbrushes and diapers.

"Never before have we learned of 700 children being detained in a facility built for 104 or 106 adults," Mukherjee said in her testimony. "Never before have we met with children detained in [Customs and Border Patrol] custody for a week, much less weeks and nearly a month. Never before have we had to directly intervene to get critically ill babies admitted to the hospital."

Mukherjee was part of a 10-person team sent to inspect conditions at the holding centers to make sure they complied with court-ordered standards that the camps be "safe and sanitary." The group was allowed to speak to detained children but they were denied free access or even tours of the facility.

"The extraordinary trauma inflicted on separated children is not an incidental byproduct of the administration's family separation policy it is the very point," she said in her testimony. "The federal government seeks to inflict so much distress on children seeking asylum that other families would be deterred from trying to seek refuge in this country."

The Trump administration is creating a crisis that's going to be felt for years to come.
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https://imgur.com/kkm3QaD