New Details of Horrific Child Abuse Cited in Emergency Restraining Order Request for 'Torture Facilities' Run by US Border Agency
A group of lawyers and advocates filed a request for an emergency restraining order aimed at ending the abuse of children in facilities operated by the federal government on the southern border, demanding a federal judge step in and take action.
The lawsuit (pdf), filed in California late Wednesday, asks U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee to order immediate inspections of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) facilities in Texas, allow medical care to reach the children imprisoned in those facilities, and to create an “intensive case management team” to handle transfers from CBP to Health and Human Services.
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The request cites testimony from children in detention as well as outside observers and offers new details of the conditions and treatment those detained have endured.
“I have been in the U.S. for six days and I have never been offered a shower or been able to brush my teeth,” one of the imprisoned children said in their testimony. “There is no soap here and our clothes are dirty.”
In comments on the case to The Los Angeles Times, Peter Schey, president of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law and lead attorney on the lawsuit, said that the effects of the mistreatment in the detention centers could last forever.
“The preventable physical and mental health harms class members are suffering may be long-lasting, or in some cases, permanent,” said Schey.
Conditions at the facilities are “deplorable,” according to the lawsuit.
“The declarations of class members also disclose that they are detained in what they call ‘hieleras,’ or ‘iceboxes,’ or in cages, under appalling, overcrowded, and unsanitary conditions which has caused a health crisis for class members and the deaths of several children,” says the lawsuit. “Class member children are held for weeks in deplorable conditions, without access to soap, clean water, showers, clean clothing, toilets, toothbrushes, adequate nutrition or adequate sleep.”
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