Images from US Border Patrol facility reveal harsh conditions for immigrants

Footage unsealed by federal judge gives most damning evidence
yet of what some call abusive conditions for people detained at
southern US border

Ed Pilkington in New York
Thursday 18 August 2016 20.02 BST

The photograph, a still image drawn from video footage captured by a security camera, shows a mass of cylindrical shapes squashed together in a box and wrapped in what appears to be silver foil, their surfaces glistening like sardines in a tin.

The shapes are not sardines, however, but human beings. And they are wrapped not in foil but in emergency blankets, handed out to them as they were put into a cramped detention center at the US border, courtesy of the federal agency, Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The image, and several others like it released on Thursday at the order of a federal judge, gives the most damning evidence yet seen of the exceptionally harsh and some say abusive conditions to which immigrants are subjected when detained at the southern US border with Mexico.

Previously held under seal in a federal lawsuit in which the CBP is being sued for allegedly degrading and unconstitutional treatment of its charges, the photos offer a window into a world that until now has been rarely seen.

The shapes disclose that about 15 immigrant detainees were packed into a single cell at the Border Patrol’s facility in Tucson, Arizona. They are wrapped from head to toe in Mylar aluminium sheets for warmth, and appear to be lying directly on top of the concrete floor with no mattressing or other bedding of any sort.

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