(Photo is from the office of the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General.)There is a terrible humanitarian crisis at our Southern border. Donald Trump won't admit it (because he has caused it), and the Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol make excuses for it. But it is real, and only getting worse. The DHS Inspector General recognizes it, and has issued two reports now -- calling it a ticking time bomb. Some have called these detention
Here is how NPR reports it:
The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General is warning about "dangerous overcrowding" in Border Patrol facilities in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. In a strongly worded report, the inspector general said the prolonged detention of migrants without proper food, hygiene or laundry facilities — some for more than a month — requires "immediate attention and action." The report comes amid growing outrage over detention conditions for migrants and follows reports that migrant children were kept in squalid conditions without enough food and basic necessities in a Border Patrol station in West Texas. Inspectors from DHS's Office of Inspector General in June visited Border Patrol facilities and ports of entry across the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, the busiest sector in the country for illegal border crossings. "We are concerned that overcrowding and prolonged detention represent an immediate risk to the health and safety of DHS agents and officers, and to those detained," they wrote. . . . In May, according to DHS, an average of more than 4,600 people a day crossed illegally or arrived at ports of entry without the proper documents, compared to less than 700 a day in the same period two years ago. DHS says Customs and Border Protection facilities are at "peak capacity" and that the agency is adding detention capacity at three tent facilities in order to improve the conditions for migrants. CBP also says it "continues to take steps to address the health and safety of those in custody," including by expanding medical services. The inspector general's office released a report in May describing similarly dangerous overcrowding conditions in Border Patrol cells in the El Paso region. The latest report from the Rio Grande Valley includes photos of migrants penned into overcrowded Border Patrol facilities — including one man pressing a cardboard sign to a cell window with the word "Help." The inspectors quote one unnamed senior manager calling the situation a "ticking time bomb." Inspectors found that hundreds of children were held for longer than the 72 hours, the maximum time federal rules allow. In some cases, kids were held for more than two weeks. And some adults were kept in standing-room-only cells, without access to showers, for more than a week. Some have called these detention facilities at the border "concentration camps". That upsets Trump, the DHS, and the Border Patrol, but the deplorable conditions make the portrayal rather accurate. And the survivors of America's past concentration camps (for the citizens of Japanese heritage during World War II) agree with the designation. The picture below (by Molly Hennessy-Fiske of the Los Angeles Times) shows some of those survivors demonstrating at Fort Sill in Oklahoma to stop the establishment of even more of these concentration camps. They are upset that this country is repeating the mistakes of the past.
