Biden Border Crisis: Migrant Children Sleep on Floor, No Sunlight or Showers for Days
Detention facility bursting at 729% capacity as kids take turns sleeping on floors
© press
As Joe Biden's administration refuses to acknowledge the spiraling crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, reports are emerging from migrant facilities of children being held in inhumane conditions.
While an influx of unaccompanied minors continues along the southern border, the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) holding facility in Donna, Texas, was at 729% pandemic-era capacity at the beginning of March.
"Some of the boys said that conditions were so overcrowded that they had to take turns sleeping on the floor," Neha Desai, an attorney representing migrant youth in federal government custody, told CBS News.
The Donna migrant facility is designed for 250 migrants for pandemic-era capacity but was holding more than 1,800 people on March 2.
According to Desai, aside from being forced to take turns in sleeping on the floor, kids are going days without showers or even sunlight in the overcrowded facility.
"They all said they wanted to shower more and were told they couldn't," Desai said of the migrant children she spoke with.
© press
"One of them shared that he could only see the sun when he showered because you can see the sun through the window,” she explained.
The Biden administration reopened the Donna child detention facility last month and it has been operating over its pandemic capacity for weeks, according to The Blaze.
"Some of the boys said that conditions were so overcrowded that they had to take turns sleeping on the floor," Desai told CBS News.
"They all said they wanted to shower more and were told they couldn't," Desai said, adding that several minors were only permitted to shower once in seven days.
She said many children did not have access to outside activities and were visibly emotional.
Children had been denied phone calls to communicate with family members.
"They were hysterically crying, wanting to talk to their family," she said.
Leecia Welch, a senior director and lawyer at the National Center for Youth Law, spoke to about a dozen children at the Donna facility.
"Donna is quickly becoming a humanitarian crisis," Welch told CNN.
"We understand the administration inherited this disaster, but I cannot stress enough how urgent the situation is with the growing number of young unaccompanied children.
"We spoke to numerous distraught children who don't understand why they can't talk to their parents, see their siblings at Donna, or get some fresh air."
The lawyers said CBP denied them access to the facility.
As The Washington Post reported last week, "The magnitude came into clearer focus Wednesday as the new administration was holding record numbers of unaccompanied migrant teens and children in detention cells for far longer than legally allowed and federal health officials fell further behind in their race to find space for them in shelters."
The New York Times also reported that migrant facilities were "akin to jails."
CNN reported that the record-high "number of unaccompanied migrant children in Border Patrol custody continues to climb, reaching more than 3,700 on Wednesday, many of them in jail-like facilities along the US-Mexico border."
An Axios report found that February had the highest number in the history of the Unaccompanied Alien Child program.
There were nearly 9,500 unaccompanied children who were taken into custody in February, a 21-month high.
Border officials expect the number of unaccompanied minors to surge to 13,000 children in May, which would be the most of the border crisis.
© press
The massive influx of illegal immigrants is believed to stem from Joe Biden's lax border and immigration policies.
"DHS has continued our close coordination with HHS as it increases its capacity to care for unaccompanied minors and place them with sponsors," a CBP spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
"Our goal is to ensure that CBP has the continued capability to quickly and efficiently transfer unaccompanied minors after they are apprehended to HHS custody, as is required by U.S. law, and as is clearly in the best interest of the children."
"Addressing the flow of unaccompanied children crossing our southwest border is an important priority of this Administration and DHS," the CBP spokesperson added.
"It requires a whole of government coordinated and sustained response."
After being overwhelmed by the surge of illegal immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Department of Homeland Security is recruiting volunteers from the agency to assist in the border crisis.
"Today, I activated the Volunteer Force to support Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they face a surge in migration along the Southwest Border," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reportedly said in an email to DHS staff.
The Biden administration has publicly denied that there is a crisis at the border.
