250 Children Jailed in Misery at Texas Border

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — A traumatic and dangerous situation is unfolding for some 250 infants, children and teens locked up for up to 27 days without adequate food, water and sanitation, according to a legal team that interviewed dozens of children at a Border Patrol station in Texas.

The attorneys who recently visited the jail near El Paso told The Associated Press that three girls, ages 10 to 15, said they had been taking turns watching over a sick 2-year-old boy because there was no one else to look after him.

When the lawyers saw the boy, he wasn’t wearing a diaper and had wet his pants, and his shirt was smeared in mucus. They said at least 15 children at the facility had the flu, and some were kept in medical quarantine.

The children told lawyers they were fed uncooked frozen food or rice and had gone weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes at the makeshift prison in Clint, in the desert scrubland some 25 miles southeast of El Paso.

“In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” said Holly Cooper, an attorney who represents detained youths. “Seeing our country at this crucible moment where we have forsaken children and failed to see them as human is hopefully a wake-up for this country to move toward change.”

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