WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden’s administration has been trying for weeks to prevent the public from seeing images like the ones that emerged Monday showing immigrant children at the border sleeping on mats under sheet blankets, separated in groups by plastic partitions.
Administration officials have strongly refused to call for the arrest of more than 15,000 children in U.S. custody, or the conditions in which they live. But they have hindered most of the efforts of outsiders to decide for themselves.
Officials banned nonprofit lawyers from overseeing entry to a border patrol store where thousands of children and teens are detained. And federal agencies have rejected or ignored dozens of requests for means of access to places of detention. This access was granted several times by President Donald Trump’s administration, the restrictive approach of which Biden promised to reverse.
The new president faces growing criticism for the apparent secrecy at the border, including fellow Democrats.
Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that “the administration has a commitment to transparency to ensure that the media has a chance to report on all aspects of what is happening in the border “.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki added that the White House was working with national security officials and the Department of Health and Human Services to “finalize details” and hoped to have an update in the “coming days.” .
Axios first posted a series of photos taken Monday inside the largest border patrol detention center, an extensive tent facility in the city of Donna, South Texas. The photos were posted by Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat from the border town of Laredo.
Cuellar said he posted the photos in part because the administration has denied media access to Donna’s store. He said he also wanted to draw attention to the extreme challenges facing border guards in seeing so many children, sometimes for a week or more, despite the three-day limit for detention of Border Patrol minors.
“We should take care of these children as if they were our own children,” Cuellar said.
Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican Education and Legal Defense Fund, said the U.S. should allow media access to border facilities while respecting the privacy of immigrants detained inside. He noted the risk of sharing without permission images of children who have already suffered trauma.
“We should be aware of these conditions,” Saenz said. “People need to see them so they can assess inhumanity and we hope to pursue more humane policies.”
The White House has been proud of its methodical implementation of the policy during its first 50 days, but Western wing aides acknowledge in private that they were surprised by the increase in migrants at the border and the fury resulting media.
Republican lawmakers largely settled the debate on the $ 1.9 trillion COVID relief bill. Although none of them voted for the package, their opposition was silenced and instead focused on issues of cultural warfare, such as the debate over racial stereotypes in some books by Dr. Seuss, rather than a bill that was generally popular among Republican Party voters.
But the Republican Party has taken the border situation with both hands, reclaiming the issue that was key to pushing Trump to the top of the Republican camp in 2016. In 2018, the Trump administration arrested hundreds of children in many of the same facilities. Used now after separating them from their parents. The following year, hundreds of families and children detained at a West Texas border station spent days without adequate food, water or soap.
Biden has maintained a Trump-era public health order and deported thousands of immigrant adults and families, but has refused to deport immigrant children without parents after a federal appeals court opened in January. the way to do it. He also moved to accelerate the reunification of hundreds of separated immigrant families.
“What Trump did was horrible,” Cuellar said. “These images show that even under our best intentions, and the Biden administration has the best intentions, it’s still very difficult.”
Cuellar said the White House needs to work more with Mexico and Central America to prevent people from leaving their home countries. The White House said Monday that key officials would go to Mexico and Guatemala this week.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat who visited a facility in El Paso, Texas last week, told NPR, “We want to make sure the press has access to make the administration accountable.”
The Associated Press has been requesting access to the border facilities for more than a month. Journalists first applied to Health and Human Services on Feb. 4 to allow access to a reopened overvoltage facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, with capacity for hundreds of teens. . And they have asked National Security officials for access at least seven times to border patrol facilities, with no response. The AP has also asked Psaki to open border facilities.
Trump-led border agencies allowed limited media visits to both Homeland Security and Health and Human Services facilities. Several of these visits revealed worrying conditions inside, including the detention of a large number of children up to five years apart from their parents.
Under Biden, agencies have also denied full access to nonprofit lawyers who oversee facilities where children are detained. These monitoring visits take place under a judicial settlement agreement.
When lawyers visited the Donna Border Patrol facility this month, where thousands of children are now detained, officers refused to let them in and the Justice Department said they had no right to access. -hi. Lawyers were forced to interview children abroad. The Justice Department declined to comment.
Recently published photographs published by Cuellar’s office show groups of children crammed inside the partitions. Some seem to be watching TV, while others are lying on mats, side by side. Children are shown wearing surgical masks but being close to each other.
Donna’s facility consists of large interconnected tents. The top photographs taken by AP show enclosed outdoor areas where children can go. But lawyers who have interviewed children detained at Donna say some may spend days without being allowed to leave.
The administration is rushing to open more space to get approximately 5,000 children from the border patrol detention and to the health and human services facilities best suited for young people. It has also tried to expedite the release of children in HHS custody to parents and other sponsors in the US. But border agents continue to capture more children daily than HHS releases, even though more than 40% of young people in the system have parents or a legal guardian who could take them.
Meanwhile, the administration sees its emergency facilities for immigrant children approaching capacity almost as quickly as it can open them. The downtown Dallas Convention Center has 1,500 teens less than a week after it opened and is expected to host 500 more teens Monday, according to HHS. Its current capacity is 2,300 people.
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Lemire reported from New York and Merchant reported from Houston.