Legal advocates say immigrant children spend weeks in cold, sunless rooms

Court motion asks judge to clarify children’s right to counsel

Three legal groups that police the federal government’s compliance with a longstanding court agreement asked a judge on Friday afternoon to clarify what right to counsel immigrant children have under that agreement. The motion from the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, the National Center for Youth Law, and Children’s Rights arrived against a backdrop that legal advocates describe: children held for weeks, and in some cases up to a month, in cold, sunless rooms built to house them for no more than three days. The U.S. Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The agreement at issue is the Flores Settlement, the court settlement between the federal government and legal advocates representing immigrant children. It created standards meant to ensure safe and sanitary conditions in federal custody, and it allows CBP to hold children in its facilities for up to 72 hours. The federal government has a pending appeal with an appellate court to terminate the agreement.

Children’s normal path through the system runs through temporary stations first. Immigrant children arrested alone or with their families by Border Patrol are typically processed in those stations and then transferred to another agency, where they could be placed in long-term detention centers or released with ankle monitors.

The annual report arrives even as border arrests sit at a record low. Despite a record low number of border arrests, an annual report filed with the court by CBP found that officials took more than the recommended time to process families from March through June, the last month reported. Legal advocates found many children spent weeks and up to a month at these temporary facilities not designed for long-term stays.

Advocates also documented what happens when parents try to reach lawyers. Multiple parents held in CBP stations this year in Del Rio, Texas, Laredo, Texas and San Diego, California, reported either no access to a phone call with attorneys or calls that lasted less than five minutes.

Inside the rooms, immigrant parents described being held with their children in cold spaces with cement floors and windows that only faced indoors. Lights are kept on all day and night, and many parents reported losing their sense of time. “In the morning they bring us a burrito and that’s the way we learn that it is the morning,” one parent held with her teenage daughter in Laredo, Texas, in November said in her declaration. Others said they tried to steal glimpses of wristwatches as agents walked by.

Night brings thin mats and Mylar blankets — and, for at least one child, a rash. One parent said the mats gave her child a rash, and she described how she worked around it: “At night I lie on my back and I tell him not to touch the mat but to lie on top of me, to sleep on my chest. His rash has gone down since we began sleeping this way, with me as his bed, protecting him.”

Families with young children reported being held in detention pods with no books, toys or television. One mother who was allowed to stay with her four-year-old daughter by her side said they were able to step outside the pod for an hour a day. “That is not enough for a child, to be locked in a cell 23 hours a day,” she said.

Parents were also concerned for their children’s well-being. The mother of the four-year-old said her child lost weight in the two weeks of her detention and developed a stutter that only worsened after witnessing a man, handcuffed and chained at the legs and waist, walking out of the facility to be deported. “She started crying, asking if they would chain her and take us from here the same way. Her stutter increased after that. Every time she thinks of it, she starts to cry again,” the mother said.