Migrant teen held in ICE detention center: 'You could hear them crying all the time'

Mark Curnutte, Cincinnati Enquirer Published 5:58 a.m. ET June 22, 2018 | Updated 10:08 a.m. ET June 22, 2018



About five weeks ago, a Guatemalan teen climbed a 15-foot border wall made of block and steel columns and illegally entered the country at Yuma, Arizona. Border Patrol agents arrested him and took him up the road to a holding facility in Phoenix.

For 20 days, Edmilson Aguilar Punay says, he saw and experienced how the United States handled immigrant children following an April policy change – a change that created a national outcry.

Edmilson, 16, finally was allowed to travel to Cincinnati, where his mother and siblings live, in early June. But first, his attorney said, he suffered trauma from being in captivity and witnessing the effects of family separation on other migrant youths. Government documents confirm the timeline, attorney Julie Leftwich LeMaster said.

Edmilson was one of about 30 young men and boys – some as young as 5 – squeezed into an office-sized, windowless room in a U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement processing center in Phoenix, Edmilson said.

“I saw boys, women, pregnant women, women with children, children by themselves, and men," he said through an interpreter. "They put us in a room, and this room was rounded-up young men. And they brought the kids in.”

A single toilet sat in the center of the open room.

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https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2018/06/22/guatemalan-immigrant-teen-held-ice-detention-center-they-left-child-himself-cincinnati-phoenix/712145002/