According to several interviews conducted by lawyers at the soft-sided facility in Donna,Texas, unaccompanied children there are being denied showers, phone calls with family members, and time outside.
March 12, 2021
March 17, 2021
Tag: Human Rights
February 15, 2021
February 17, 2021
Two migrants sustained serious injuries after falling from the border wall near New Mexico and were expelled to Mexico instead of receiving medical attention, despite not being able to stand on their own.
February 4, 2021
February 4, 2021
Attorneys filed whistleblower statements with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights claiming that CBP and Border Patrol leadership participated in a massive cover-up of the 2010 killing of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas, an unarmed and detained migrant.
January 6, 2021
January 29, 2021
The Remain in Mexico program subjects children and adults to serious, long-term harm and trauma and should be dismantled immediately, according to a report released by Human Rights Watch and several university health centers. The report details various forms of abuse inflicted on dozens of participants and urges Joe Biden to quickly end the program.
January 5, 2021
January 29, 2021
According to a report published by The Intercept, at least three asylum-seeking mothers who gave birth in the US (making their children legally U.S. citizens) were told by CBP agents that they would be sent to stay with family but instead were sent back to Mexico without being processed or having an opportunity to have their claims heard.
December 30, 2020
January 29, 2021
Close to 200 Cuban migrants staged a protest at the border in Ciudad Juarez, calling to be let into the United States. Many have been waiting at the border for months as a result of the Remain in Mexico program.
December 23, 2020
January 29, 2021
2020 was the deadliest year on record for migrants crossing into Arizona, with 225 remains of migrants found so far according to Humane Borders and the Pima County Medical Examiner. This is likely due to a combination of border wall construction forcing migrants to take remote routes, increased CBP hostility to humanitarian groups, and soaring temperatures.
December 12, 2020
December 16, 2020
- U.S. border officials have expelled at least 66 unaccompanied migrant children without a court hearing or asylum interview since a federal judge ordered them to stop the practice, the Trump administration conceded.
December 9, 2020
December 16, 2020
- The Trump administration is proposing a far-reaching overhaul of the asylum system that would make it harder for applicants to win humanitarian protection in the U.S. and would allow the government to quickly deport many more asylum seekers at the border. The proposal, made public Wednesday by the Justice and Homeland Security Departments, would mean most asylum applicants are no longer entitled to a full court proceeding to hear their claims, as they are now.
December 3, 2020
December 16, 2020
- An El Paso immigrant detention facility has the largest current detainee COVID-19 outbreak of any Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facility in the United States. As of Nov. 30, 44 detainees at El Paso Service Processing Center have COVID-19, according to ICE’s website. Since the beginning of the pandemic, 301 detainees in El Paso have tested positive for the virus. The next largest outbreak is 35 at a detention facility in Pearsall, Texas.
December 2, 2020
December 16, 2020
- Legal advocates tasked by a federal judge with helping to find migrant families separated at the U.S. border in 2017 and 2018 say that after months of pleas, the government last week handed over new data that could be critical to helping them find the families.
November 25, 2020
December 16, 2020
- US Customs and Border Protection held more than five dozen children, some under the age of 1, in facilities along the US-Mexico border for over three days during the last two months, according to a new federal court filing.
November 19, 2020
December 16, 2020
- The Trump White House blocked the Justice Department from making a deal in October 2019 to pay for mental health services for migrant families who had been separated by the Trump administration, two current and two former senior administration officials told NBC News.
November 18, 2020
December 16, 2020
- A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to halt its practice of “expelling” underage migrants who enter the United States without a parent, a ruling that also cast doubt on the broader legality of the emergency public health measures the U.S. government has used since March to impose strict border controls. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan’s preliminary injunction requires the Trump administration to once more process the humanitarian claims of minors who cross the U.S. border alone, rather than returning them to Mexico or flying them back to their home countries without due process.
November 18, 2020
December 16, 2020
- A federal judge blocked President Trump’s policy of turning away migrant children at the border as public health risks, ruling that the expulsion of thousands of children without due process exceeded the authority that public health emergency decrees confer.
November 10, 2020
November 19, 2020
- Lawyers working to reunite migrant families separated by the Trump administration before and during its “zero tolerance” policy at the border now believe the number of separated children for whom they have not been able to find parents is 666, higher than they told a federal judge last month, according to an email obtained by NBC News. Nearly 20 percent, or 129, of those children were under 5 at the time of the separation, according to a source familiar with the data.
November 2, 2020
November 19, 2020
- Since the introduction of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) – also known as “Remain in Mexico” – in 2019, asylum seekers seeking to enter the US via the US-Mexico border must wait in Mexico for the duration of their US immigration court proceedings. As a result of this policy, thousands of migrants and asylum seekers found themselves sleeping on the streets near the border. Gradually, a camp of approximately 3,000 to 4,000 people began to form on the banks of the River Grande that separates the northern Mexican town of Matamoros from the Texan town of Brownsville.
October 30, 2020
November 19, 2020
- Authorities in the United States who turned away asylum-seekers at official border crossings told immigrants they didn’t have space to process them, regardless of whether they actually could, according to an unpublished inspector general’s report obtained by BuzzFeed News.
October 30, 2020
November 19, 2020
- An immigration detention center in south Texas has been converted into a staging ground to hold migrant families with children who the Trump administration seeks to expel from the U.S. without a court hearing, asylum interview or consultation with lawyers.
October 29, 2020
November 19, 2020
- Local law enforcement officials in Santa Cruz County are investigating the deaths of two men believed to be undocumented migrants who were found dead over the past week near the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales.