What a Lawyer Saw at Border Detention Centers

Brut America

No running water. Violently ill children. A premature baby wrapped in a filthy towel. Here are five alarming conditions witnessed by an immigration lawyer at a detention center on the southern border.

Transcript

00:0050% of the people that I saw required immediate emergency medical attention.

00:20They were presenting with the symptoms you would associate with the flu, deeply congested,

00:29incredibly deep, rasping cough.

00:33One of these children had not had anything to eat or drink for two days.

00:36She was very, very ill.

00:38She had been throwing up, but she stopped throwing up when she stopped eating and drinking.

00:45She had, you know, diarrhea.

00:50We were able to get her to eat a little bit of applesauce, and shortly thereafter she

00:57began vomiting again.

00:58Four of the eight toddlers that I personally interviewed ended up being transferred to

01:06a medical facility or hospitalized.

01:08So 50% of the people that I saw required immediate emergency medical attention.

01:20There's no soap.

01:22There's no running water.

01:24There were rarely showers.

01:29There were no towels.

01:31There's no way to clean the babies or to clean themselves.

01:35We had the mother in the wheelchair with the premature baby.

01:38The mother was 16.

01:39It was the smallest baby I've ever seen outside of a hospital.

01:43She kept telling us she was a month old, and I just kept saying, there's no way this child

01:47is a month old.

01:48She was wrapped in the filthiest hand towel you've ever seen.

01:56Well we may have only seen 20 or we may have only seen 30, but that doesn't mean that there's

01:59only 20 or 30 ill children there.

02:02Just from a purely statistical point of view, if what we have randomly seen out of that

02:09small sampling is then extrapolated out over the greater population, it is going to be

02:18an incredibly widespread health crisis.

02:27The maximum for the border patrol facilities is 72 hours, and that's for adults.

02:33Children are never supposed to be detained for any length of time in these facilities.

02:41And we were seeing people, children, who had been there for weeks.

02:56It doesn't require additional funding to allow people to use the restrooms that are there

03:01and available.

03:02By not allowing access to the restrooms, that's just cruelty for cruelty's sake.

03:07It's not a budgetary issue.

03:09I just see these children who are so incredibly emotionally traumatized, physically weak and

03:17ill, and I just wonder what the future holds for them.

03:22Not necessarily where they end up geographically, but will they be reunited with their family?

03:27Are these scars that they will ever be able to overcome and have normal relationships

03:34with people?

03:35Or have we done so much damage to them?

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