‘I Have Never Heard Of This Level Of Inhumanity’: Bleak Portrait Emerges From Interviews With Detained Immigrant Children
Lawyers were allowed to interview immigrant children who are being held in U.S. custody to assess the care they are receiving. The issue has gained national attention following several deaths and high-profile reports of neglect. Meanwhile, years ago the government realized that the Border Patrol system was plagued by bad actors allowed to stay on the payroll. The problem is still not fixed, ProPublica reports.
The Associated Press:
Migrant Children Describe Neglect At Texas Border Facility
A 2-year-old boy locked in detention wants to be held all the time. A few girls, ages 10 to 15, say they've been doing their best to feed and soothe the clingy toddler who was handed to them by a guard days ago. Lawyers warn that kids are taking care of kids, and there's inadequate food, water and sanitation for the 250 infants, children and teens at the Border Patrol station. The bleak portrait emerged Thursday after a legal team interviewed 60 children at the facility near El Paso that has become the latest place where attorneys say young migrants are describing neglect and mistreatment at the hands of the U.S. government. (Attanasio, Burke and Mendoz, 6/20)
ProPublica:
Years Ago, The Border Patrol’s Discipline System Was Denounced As 'Broken.' It’s Still Not Fixed.
Perhaps the most far-reaching idea was to reclassify the more than 40,000 Border Patrol agents and customs officers as “national security employees,” just as all FBI agents and employees at a number of other Homeland Security agencies currently are. Taking away their status as civil servants, the thinking went, would make it easier to fire corrupt and abusive employees.It was, to be sure, an extreme measure. But the panel, a subcommittee of a larger Homeland Security advisory council, had been created late in President Barack Obama’s second term because U.S. Customs and Border Protection seemed in crisis, and the panel subsequently determined that the agency was plagued by a system that allowed bad actors to stay on the payroll for years after they’d engaged in egregious, even criminal, misconduct. (Thompson, 6/20)
