Central Coast lawmaker: Treatment of migrant children ‘day and night’ compared to Trump admin
U.S. Representative Salud Carbajal called conditions he witnessed at a Texas border detention facility and the treatment of migrant children there “day and night” compared to facilities he toured during former President Donald J. Trump’s administration.
Carbajal, a three-term Democratic legislator representing San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties, toured the Carrizo Springs Influx Care Facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, on Wednesday as the number of unaccompanied minors detained at the U.S.-Mexico border has exploded in recent weeks.
The Central Coast congressman, who immigrated to the United States at an early age, was among a handful of lawmakers given access, along with an NBC News crew, to the emergency facility currently housing about 766 minors.
CNN reports that government data shows that more than 11,000 unaccompanied migrant children were detained at the border between Feb. 28 and March 20, an average of more than 600 per day.
The Carrizo Springs facility, which only houses minors between the ages of 13 and 17, is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and was first opened briefly in summer 2019 under the Trump administration.
President Joe Biden’s administration, which re-opened the facility in late February, has faced pressure to give journalists access inside border detention centers amid the recent surge.
Wednesday’s tour was the first granted to lawmakers and was featured in a segment by NBC News.
The trip was Carbajal’s third such look at a border facility since Trump-era officials implemented a “zero tolerance” policy that the congressman says resulted in thousands of children being separated from their families without a plan in place to reunite them.
In June 2018, Carbajal toured the Tornillo detention center in southern Texas to see how the policy was impacting children.
In January 2019, he visited a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in Alamogordo, New Mexico, to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of two migrant children there.
Carbajal told local reporters at news conference Thursday that not only are HSS officials at the Carrizo Springs facility providing humane treatment and “robust” services to those housed there, but they are also “working frantically” to reunite them with family members or link them to foster care or other housing alternatives.
He said HHS officials are currently prioritizing adding more beds and staff to handle the growing number of children and avoid the bottleneck that commonly occurs at the intake process.
Of all unaccompanied minors detained at the border, Carbajal said, roughly 80% are in the process of being reunited with family members.
“It’s just a matter of having the staffing to follow up with their families to get them placed,” he said.
Carbajal said the children are housed in dorm-like settings and sleep on bunk beds, and are given education assessments to determine their appropriate placement in various educational programs, which he said were virtually nonexistent in past years.
Officials have also implemented strict COVID-19 safety measures, with children tested prior to entry and given clothes, shoes and a hygiene kit upon arrival.
In addition, staff at the Carrizo Springs facility have all undergone rigorous background checks, a vital measure that Carbajal said prevents alleged abuses against detainees prevalent under the previous presidential administration.
The envoy members were given direct access to teenage detainees at Carrizo Springs, and asked the kids about conditions firsthand. Carbajal said responses showed the teens “overwhelmingly like the services and food.”
“I asked them, ‘Can you name one thing that you don’t like?’ ” Carbajal told reporters. “I didn’t hear one answer in the negative.”
When asked why they made the dangerous journey to the United States, the kids told him it was to “get a better education and to pursue a better way of life,” Carbajal said.
But the current situation is not ideal, Carbajal said, and Biden administration officials are working to stem the flow of migrants to the border by reversing Trump-era policies that he said actually incentivized migration.
He cited the Central American Minors Program, which Biden restored by executive order in February. That previously enabled nearly 5,000 vulnerable youths in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala to apply to join parents in the United States with legal status.
Biden’s proposed sweeping immigration bill, the U.S. Citizenship Act, would include a $4 billion assistance package to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, conditioned on those countries’ performance in reducing “the endemic corruption, violence, and poverty that causes people to flee their home countries,” Carbajal said.
The legislator agreed that the current border situation is a crisis that demands immediate action. In any situation in which children are being held in detention, Carbajal said, “there is a sense of urgency.”
But he said he ultimately was “heartened” to see the new administration’s operation of the facility and its aggressive reversal of former “broken” policies.
“They’re doing the best they can with what they’ve inherited, which was chaos,” Carbajal said.
Correction: This article has been updated to note that news media were given access to the facility prior to the tour Wednesday.
This story was originally published March 25, 2021 at 6:28 PM.
