Migrant children suffer from starvation and hypothermia in open-air desert camps, court documents show

(CNN) — A Colombian girl hid in a portable toilet to protect herself from a strong, cold wind as she and her parents waited in a makeshift camp along the US-Mexico border earlier this month.

Border Patrol agents directed them to a makeshift camp to wait for them to file their asylum claims, but offered them no help or shelter beyond a feces-filled toilet, according to an affidavit filed in federal court and interviews with volunteers. .

When the temperature dropped, the girl started convulsing. Desperate and in tears, her father wrapped her in a blanket he found in the mud and called 911, she said in a statement. But he didn’t speak English and the operator didn’t speak Spanish. Finally, an ambulance arrived and the girl, motionless and pale, was taken to the hospital with her mother. The father claimed that the agents warned him that if he left the camp and moved in with his family, he would lose his chance at asylum.

The episode was one of many filed in court Thursday regarding living conditions in open-air camps near the US-Mexico border in California. Children’s rights advocates say federal immigration officials have directed migrants to those camps, but have not provided them with adequate food, water, shelter or medical services.

Now, lawyers are asking a judge to rule that the federal government is legally obligated to quickly move these children to safe, sanitary facilities. The move comes on the same day that President Joe Biden traveled to the border to meet with Border Patrol agents, law enforcement and local officials to pressure Republicans to abandon the Senate border deal. A decision in their favor could set a legal precedent for states beyond California.

“For at least a year, children have been held in these atrocious conditions for varying periods of time, and there is no reason to believe that the situation will resolve itself,” Neha Desai, senior director of immigration at the National Center for Youth Law, told Thursday’s legal proceedings. A legal firm behind. He said he interacted with dozens of children and families when he visited several sites this week.

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tens of thousands of asylum seekers — from countries ranging from Mexico and Venezuela to China and India — have arrived at these makeshift camps in remote parts of the California desert since last spring. To initiate an asylum application, migrants must first present themselves to Border Patrol agents, who must transport them for immigration processing. After that, they are released to border communities or held in federal custody while they await an opportunity to convince the U.S. government that they face real threats of persecution if they are forced to return to their homelands. Many are deported.

The influx of immigrants waiting to start the process coincides with the longest delay in asylum cases in US history. More than 3.3 million immigration court cases are pending, according to data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks immigration court data. Many wait years to go to court.

While aid workers report that the number of migrants in the camps has declined in recent months, amid stricter law enforcement by authorities on the Mexican side of the border, they warn that dozens of children continue to arrive in these places without food, water or anything else. shelter

At several locations along the border in the San Diego area, Thursday’s statements alleged, migrants fell from a 30-foot (9-meter) wall made of metal bars with sharp edges; Some get trapped between the primary and secondary border walls, unable to escape. Elsewhere, tarp tents erected by volunteers help protect against the heat or cold, but aid workers told CNN that high winds often rip them apart. The sites are littered with trash and sometimes filled with smoke from fires that migrants burn to stay warm. During storms, the camps are filled with mud and migrants struggle to stay dry.

A watchdog within the federal government also “expressed concern” about conditions in California months ago. The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties wrote in September in response to a civil rights complaint filed by the attorney that it had “expressed concerns” to CBP and reported that the agency “has humanitarian assistance plans to ensure these conditions. Repeatedly.” Don’t.”

Lawyers behind the new legal action argue in court documents that the Border Patrol’s actions show the agency has assumed authority over migrants, with statements noting that agents regularly patrol the camps, observe them with surveillance cameras, force migrants into tents. came, braceleted, searched, told where to stand, and threatened with losing their chance at asylum if they left.

Lawyers also suggest that the agency “appears to exercise discretion in how quickly it processes people,” noting that some sites had previously been cleared of immigrants before visits by high-level Homeland Security officials. And just yesterday, before Thursday’s court proceedings, volunteers said migrants had been evicted from at least one camp again, and cell phone video reviewed by CNN showed bulldozers being used to tear down makeshift shelters.

Statements submitted as part of this new legal challenge came from aid workers, lawyers and a doctor, as well as a child and two parents who were at the camp this month. They claim that the children go days without food and, at night, their screams can be heard throughout the camp.

An aid worker described how a mother told her she had seen her one-year-old daughter fall from the border wall with a strap on her back, but said the woman refused to seek medical treatment for herself and her daughter at a hospital because an agent Border Patrol told him it could jeopardize his immigration chances. The statements also described cases where aid workers had to organize emergency medical care for children. Among them: an 8-year-old boy who suffered a seizure after Mexican authorities took his medication, a child who was limping and vomiting and other children who appeared to be hypothermic.

Some alleged that Border Patrol agents saw the children’s suffering but did little about it. In one case, a lawyer said officers saw a parent hold a child over a fire to keep warm. In the absence of the government, volunteers and humanitarian workers said they intervened to provide food and shelter and called 911 in times of medical emergencies. About a dozen volunteers and lawyers have called the conditions inhumane and unsustainable in sworn statements and interviews with CNN.

“Without the vital support volunteers have provided over the months, who knows how many children’s lives would have been lost,” Desai said in his statement. “It is the government’s responsibility to ensure that these children’s most basic needs are met, not humanitarian volunteers.”

Theresa Cheng, a California doctor and civil rights attorney who has volunteered at the camps, was appalled by what she saw and called it a “revelation” in her statement. He said he has seen children waiting 5 days for immigration processing. In some camps, he said, he had to intervene and provide medical care to migrants of all ages.

He said he saw a young woman suffering from a stroke, a pregnant woman about to give birth, young newborns needing formula and elderly people crossing the border using canes.

“This population,” he told CNN, “is much more vulnerable than people expect.”