Front Burner - “The place is a jail”: How kids are treated at the U.S.-Mexico border

Episode Date: June 28, 2019

There has been renewed attention on the treatment of migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border over the last two weeks. First, accounts of inadequate food, water and sanitation at U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities where unaccompanied children are held awaiting shelter space sparked outrage. Then, a horrible photograph of the drowned bodies of a father and his young daughter in the Rio Grande river offered a stark reminder of the perils of crossing into the United States. Today on Front Burner, Bob Moore has reported on immigration and the border from El Paso, Texas for more than 30 years. He walks us through what kids go through on their way to the border and how they’re treated once they get into the country: “These are human beings who are paying the price of all this political failure.”

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. As I talk about it, I can feel and smell everything that I did back then. And he looks down at me, I'm looking up at him, and he says, that's my little girl. It's a 30-year-old homicide where we don't have anybody charged and convicted.

Felt like a murderer had gotten away with something. Tell me now, did you have anything to do with the murder? Someone Knows Something with David Ridgen, Season 5. Now available. Go to cbc.ca slash sks. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. I had a physical reaction when I saw this photograph. I felt sick to my stomach. I had to force myself to look at it.

A man face down in murky water. A small girl lies beside him, tucked into his t-shirt. Her arm is draped around his neck. Oscar Martinez and his daughter Valeria are both dead, drowned crossing the Rio Grande River from Mexico into the United States of America. The last two weeks have brought renewed, fierce attention to how the United States treats migrants, especially children. It was front and center at this week's Democratic primary debates. There are undocumented children being held alone in detention, even as close as Homestead, Florida, right here, less than 30 miles from where we are tonight.

Fathers and mothers and children are dying while trying to enter the United States of America. That picture of Oscar and little Valeria, it shows how dangerous it can be to get to America. But the reports of the conditions some kids are held in once they get to the States, those are incredibly disturbing as well. Today on FrontBurner, I'm talking to immigration reporter Bob Moore about all of this. He's the head of the digital news organization El Paso Matters, and he's been reporting on the borderlands for more than three decades. This is FrontBurner. FrontBurner Bob, thank you so much for making the time to speak with me today.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I want to start with where kids go when they first get to the United States, with these border control facilities that we've heard so much about in the last week or so. You were given rare access to one of these facilities this week, I understand. What did you see? So it's important to distinguish a couple of things here. If children come with their parent or guardian, they're treated one way. their parent or guardian, they're treated one way. If they come by themselves or with an adult relative who's not the parent or guardian, then they're treated another way. So let's talk about

the ones who arrive either by themselves or without a parent or guardian, because I think that's where a lot of the concern in recent days has come. The government classifies these children as unaccompanied alien children. And it can be quite jarring for people who aren't regularly around border patrol agents, but they use the word alien quite frequently to describe these children. The border patrol is the agency that polices the border and takes people into custody when they cross illegally. They are not supposed to, under the law, hold unaccompanied children for more than 72 hours. Again, the way it's supposed to work is within that 72-hour period, the Border Patrol turns over these children to a Department of Health and Human Service agency,

which would then take the children to one of 110 or so shelters that are spread across the country until they can be placed with an adult sponsor. So I understand that what's happening right now is that these children aren't being moved to these shelters, and they're being housed in these facilities. Am I right about that? That's right. And the reason given is that the shelters are full. There were more than 350 children detained there in an adult holding facility that was designed for just over 100. Okay, and tell me what these facilities are like. So I was able to go into the facility in a little town called Clint, which is about 20 miles southeast of El

Paso, which serves as the hub for unaccompanied children apprehended by the Border Patrol in the El Paso sector. In El Paso, Border Patrol says they arrested more than 4,100 migrants on a single day this week. The place is a jail. I mean, let's be frank about that. And it's not, by the Board of Charles' own admission, it's not a good place for children to be. They get three meals a day, but the meals consist of oatmeal for breakfast, ramen noodles for lunch, and a microwave frozen burrito for dinner. There's no schooling or anything. There's no coloring books for the kids to play with. There's a small exercise area for the children that also houses seven porta potties and two shower stalls, and it's all rock and concrete. So it is, by everyone's acknowledgement,

a horrible place for children to be for a long period of time. It is incredible to hear that this is happening in 2019. One of our producers spoke with a lawyer who has also gone to a nearby facility. And this lawyer talked about how there was no toothbrushes, no toothpaste, no real access to showers. It was life-changing, to be quite honest, to see other people suffering so terribly at the hands of their fellow human beings.

I just have never witnessed a humanitarian crisis before, but that's what's being perpetrated at the border. Those allegations were made about the Clint facility as well. The Border Patrol aggressively pushes back on those allegations. So the Border Patrol says that they provide them with toothbrushes every night and that the toothbrushes are then disposed of after a single use because they don't want the children taking toothbrushes back to the cells because they fear it could be converted into a weapon. Do you think it's possible, I know that you went this week

after this huge uproar that was happening, you know, do you think it's possible that some of these earlier reports that the children weren't being able to brush their teeth or shower, that they were in clothes that were covered in snot and dirt and tears, do you think that there's truth to those reports as well? Yes, absolutely. There's no reason for the lawyers who are going to have to file reports under oath in court to distort those things. reports under oath in court to distort those things. The child and the mother both had bodily fluids on their clothing, nasal mucus.

The mother had breast milk stains all over her shirt. I think there's a breakdown in how people view things. So I think the Border Patrol will say, well, we're giving these kids access to a shower. And then the lawyers will say, but who's making sure that a four-year-old is taking a shower? I think that's where the breakdown is occurring. And we asked about that yesterday while we were touring the facility, you know, who's responsible for the hygiene of the children? And the answer we got back was that up until yesterday, that was the responsibility of Customs and Border Protection officers whose job normally

is to work at international bridges. These are not trained child care workers. Beginning yesterday, the Border Patrol did place what they're calling contract monitors in the facility, which are essentially child care workers who are supposed to be now responsible for the hygiene of the children, brushing the teeth, taking the shower, etc. The report describes teen mothers and other younger kids being asked to care for infants and toddlers on their own, with little or no help from any adults. For example, we saw a little boy in diapers, or he had no diapers on. He should have had a diaper on. He was two years old.

And when I asked why he didn't have diapers on, I was told he didn't need it. He immediately urinated and he was in the care of another child. Children cannot take care of children. And yet that's how they are trying to run this facility. So we've got these children housed in these horrible conditions in these facilities. And how many children are we talking about here? When we were visiting the facility, there were 117 children being held there. And remember, the cells have a capacity of 106. When we asked the Border Patrol officials what the high point has been so far, they said at one point they were detaining more than 700 children. Wow. And how long on average are children being detained in these facilities right now? They're telling us now the average length of stay is six to 10 days. The hardest

children to place in the Office of Refugee Resettlement System right now are young mothers. So in some cases, these unaccompanied children that are being detained would include like a 16-year-old mother and an infant child. They're allowing them to stay together, and space for them is very limited in the system. So they can wind up staying for a longer period of time in these border patrol conditions. Okay, okay. And you mentioned earlier that some of these children come alone, but some of them also come with adults. Are we talking about adult relatives here as well, like siblings or an aunt? Yes.

So uncles and aunts are probably the most common. There are also, you see a lot of 14-year-olds crossing with their 18- and 19-year-old brother or sister. it's not a parent or somebody with legal guardianship, then the child will be classified as unaccompanied and placed in the process we've been talking about. This is basically protection against child trafficking. That's why the law was designed. But the law was put in place when there were far fewer children coming in this circumstance. And I'd also like to ask you, last year we heard a lot about this family separation policy. This was something that made headlines internationally. And how is what's happening now different than that? So what was happening a year ago is that the Trump administration instituted what it called a zero tolerance policy, which called for the arrest of every adult

crossing the border illegally. If the person arrested was traveling with a child, the child was taken away from them because you couldn't put the child in jail with the parent. That obviously caused a tremendous uproar across the globe, and the administration ended that policy after a couple of months. There are still separations going on under different circumstances now and sometimes murky circumstances, but not to the extent that we were seeing last year at this time. It comes after the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy, prosecuting all adults who enter the country illegally. Two U.S. officials tell NBC News health and human services wasn't given proper warning of the new policy and was caught unprepared.

And the ultimate goal here would be to reunite these children with some guardian, including the aunt or uncle that they may have originally crossed the border front with. But there's so much backlog that it's creating this huge issue right now. Yes. And it's important to understand that so much of what we're seeing right now are children coming with other relatives so that they could reunite with parents who have already migrated to the United States. Okay. I also want to touch on with you what these children have already been through by the time that they make it to these border facilities. Let's start by talking about where the children are coming from.

They're predominantly from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The children and the families that we're seeing coming across are fleeing extreme poverty, tremendous violence, particularly gang-related violence, and increasingly they're fleeing climate change. We're seeing a lot of indigenous families who are subsistence farmers who've had several years in a row of crop failures that everybody seems to believe is due to climate change. So these are people who are fleeing very desperate circumstances and making a very desperate journey to get here. And we'll talk about that desperation a little bit more when we talk about the pictures that people have been seeing. Right. I mean, let's talk about that picture, because we know that there are those who don't make it at all, like the photo of the little girl and her dad who died in

the Rio Grande earlier this week. And what did you think when you saw that photo? I probably viewed it differently than most because I've been doing this for so long. The death of that father and daughter, while shocking, is not exceptional. In the last 20 years, 8,000 migrants have died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Many of those deaths are attributable to deliberate policy choices by the U.S. government. We've made decisions over the years to essentially harden the border, made decisions over the years to essentially harden the border, which has led migrants to make dangerous crossings in more remote areas, either trying to come across a fast-running river like we saw in this photo, or crossing very desolate areas of the desert in the middle of summer. This has been going on for a long time. The two drowned after swimming across the river.

Valeria, on her father's back, tucked inside his T-shirt. After placing Valeria on shore on the American side, Avalos told police Ramirez went back into the water, heading to the Mexican side to help her. But Valeria followed Ramirez back in, and the father and daughter were swept away. Across that river is a very dangerous journey. President Trump reacted to the photo, blaming the Democrats for not supporting tougher immigration laws. If we had the right laws that the Democrats are not letting us have, those people, they wouldn't be coming up.

They wouldn't be trying. Can you unpack that a little bit more for me? up, they wouldn't be trying. Can you unpack that a little bit more for me? So why do people take the incredible risk to cross the river rather than, say, present themselves at a port of entry? In the last year, because it's become almost impossible for many to present themselves at a port of entry, the government last May began implementing a policy of what it calls metering at the international bridges. Basically, that means it limits to a handful of people a day the number of migrants that they allow to approach the port of entry to make an asylum claim. So what you see is what we saw in the case of this father and daughter and also the mother who was involved in the crossing. of this father and daughter and also the mother who was involved in the crossing,

they just got so frustrated waiting that they decided to make the illegal crossing. And we saw the results. We'll be back in a second. Discover what millions around the world already have. Audible has Canada's largest library of audiobooks, including exclusive content curated by and for Canadians. Experience books in a whole new way, where stories are brought to life by powerful performances from renowned actors and narrators.

With the free Audible app, you can listen anytime, anywhere, whether you're at home, in the car, or out on a jog. The first 30 days of the Audible membership are free, including a free book. Go to www.audible.ca slash cbc to learn more. So we've talked about this incredibly arduous journey that these children have just getting to the border and then how they're housed in these facilities at the border temporarily. You mentioned that the average number of days they're being housed in these facilities are six days. And then they move to a shelter.

Tell me about what happens next. and then they move to a shelter. Tell me about what happens next. Once they're in the shelter, the Office of Refugee Resettlement begins the process of trying to place them with a sponsor. At the end of the Obama administration, that process took about 30 days. But under the Trump administration, because of more intense requirements that have been placed, that has grown to 90 days or more. I think it was up to 180 days at one point on average. And basically what the Trump administration did was require the Office of Refugee Resettlement to take any information they got from potential sponsors and hand it over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which then in about 200 cases went

out and took into custody and began deportation proceedings against those people who had stepped forward to take in the children. The natural result of that is people stopped coming forward to take in children. They have backed off of some of that, but those policies are still in place. They have backed off of some of that, but those policies are still in place. And so you wind up with these children spending months at a time. Sometimes these are foster home settings, which aren't too bad. But we have one facility that's holding in Florida. That facility holds 1,700 kids.

And what are the conditions like in this facility? I haven't been to Homestead, which is the name of this facility, but I did go to a very similar facility last year. What is happening at Homestead to children, what is happening as the direct result of activities of the United States government is wrong. And so these are kids who are detained in very close quarters. This is not a state licensed facility. So there are no state standards that they're held to, which is usually the case with these shelters. Very little education being provided. The children are well cared for, I want to say that, but they're being detained. And there's a lot of research out there that shows that detaining children in large groups for extended periods of time delays their

emotional development and causes sometimes extreme psychological problems later in life. Now, there are a variety of different reasons why children are staying so long in government custody. But what we know from talking to pediatricians and child welfare experts is regardless of the reason, it's leading to more lasting trauma for these kids. So just to be clear, what would happen if one of these children tried to leave? Somebody would chase after them and get them. And it's interesting because technically the government will tell you the children are not being detained, but they're held in heavily secured fenced-in areas. And if somebody were to try to leave, they would be grabbed up and taken back. So you mentioned that it could be months before these children are reunited with their

families. I know that when family separation emerged last year as an issue, there were concerns that reunification would be difficult since no one seemed to be keeping proper track of who arrived with whom. And do you fear that some of these separations could become permanent? That's been the case with some of the family separations from last year because the parents were deported without their children. Now with these kids, the Office of Refugee Resettlement has a pretty good track record over the years of placing unaccompanied kids with appropriate sponsors. But the system is being tested now in ways that it never

has been before just because there are so many children flowing through it. One question I have is how unique is this treatment to the current administration? You know, I ask this because there was a video that went viral this week of a lawyer from the U.S. Department of Justice suggesting that the department may not be required to provide toothbrushes, soap, or beds for detained children. But this prosecutor, I understand, was also defending the solitary confinement of migrant children during the Obama administration. It's within everybody's common understanding that, you know, if you don't have a toothbrush, if you don't have soap, if you don't have a blanket, it's not safe and sanitary. brush, if you don't have soap, if you don't have a blanket, it's not safe and sanitary.

Wouldn't everybody agree to that? Do you agree to that? Well, I think there's fair reason to find that those things may be part of safe and sanitary. No, maybe are a part. What do you say maybe? This is actually all a court case that goes back for 30 years. So that's how long the U.S. government has been struggling with how it cares for migrant children that comes into its custody. The numbers we're seeing now are much, much higher than we've ever seen before. And that's due in part to two reasons. One is there are more kids coming across the border than we've seen previously. And secondly, the Trump administration has added steps to the family reunification process that make it more difficult to place those children with sponsors. So the end result

is we're detaining far more children than we ever have. It's fluctuated between 11,000 and 15,000 over the last year. It really is the largest mass incarceration of children who haven't been accused of any crime since the Japanese-American internment of World War II. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. You know, a lot of this is very difficult to hear. That picture of the father and the daughter in the river is incredibly hard to see. You spoke about the effects that housing children in this way can have on their emotional development. And I wonder what it's like for you.

You've been covering this for more than three decades. And when you sort of take off your reporter hat and just reflect on this as an American, what's going through your head right now? talking with migrants. I spent a lot of time talking with border patrol agents. I spent a lot of time talking with political leaders. So I see all of this in a close-up way that can be very disturbing at times. I think that what we're seeing now is the deliberate use of cruelty in an attempt to deter people from coming. And that's something that we've never seen before. I covered an issue earlier this year of hundreds of families being kept outdoors under a bridge in El Paso, sleeping on rocks, dodging pigeon droppings. And I spoke to several of those families afterwards. And I'll never forget a father calling his five-year-old son into the room and having a son kind of take down his pants to show me his legs, which were covered with bruises because he had been sleeping on rocks for days. That's something that you can never get out of your mind. And the fact that it's the

result of deliberate policy choices by the government makes it even more difficult to process. As I mentioned earlier, there have been thousands and thousands of deaths over the last 20 years of people trying to come across. The faces and names of those people are often not known to anyone. They're buried in common graves because nobody knows who they are. There's a tremendous human tragedy that's going on not just here, this is part of a global problem driven by conflict, climate change, gross income inequality. This is happening all across the globe and I think sometimes until we see pictures like we saw this week it's easy to forget that these are human beings who are

paying the price of all of this political failure. Bob, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. As we mentioned off the top, this issue has been a big topic of conversation at the Democratic primary debates this week. And the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, Julian Castro, came out swinging. Here's part of what he had to say. We need a Marshall Plan for Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador so that people can find safety and opportunity at home instead of coming to the United States to seek it. Mr. Castro also challenged all the other candidates

to endorse his policy of repealing a section of U.S. law that makes it a federal crime for immigrants to cross the border illegally. That's all for this week. FrontBurner comes to you from CBC News and CBC Podcasts. The show is produced by Chris Berube, Imogen Brochard, Elaine Chao, Shannon Higgins, Levi Garber, and Matt Alma. Derek Vanderwyk does our sound design. Our music is by Joseph Chabison of Boombox Sound. The executive producer of FrontBurner is Nick McKay-Blocos.

And I'm your host, Jamie Poisson. Thanks for listening. See you guys Monday. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts. It's 2011 and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy?

Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was, please read this while sitting down. It's like a genie came out of the bottle and you can't put it back. Gay Girl Gone. Available now.