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World & Nation
SHAKEUP AT HOMELAND SECURITY AS MIGRANT CHILDREN ARE MOVED BACK TO TROUBLED
TEXAS FACILITY
Migrants are led to a holding area in El Paso. In Washington, the House approved
a bill to provide funding to address the humanitarian crisis after changes were
made to strengthen protections for migrant children.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
By Molly O'Toole,
Jennifer Haberkorn, Molly Hennessy-Fiske
June 25, 2019 1:06 AM PT
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Reporting from WASHINGTON —
A widening scandal over unsanitary conditions for children at a U.S. Border
Patrol facility in Texas sparked resignations, replacements and last-minute
vote-wrangling Tuesday as the Trump administration and Congress scrambled to
respond to a crush at the border.
The acting head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, John Sanders, announced
his resignation amid growing outcry over reports that more than 300 children
were held in a remote Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, with insufficient
food and water, and were left to try to care for one another.
The Democratic-led House approved a $4.5-billion bill late Tuesday to provide
funding to address the humanitarian crisis, but not before threats from
progressives to oppose the measure resulted in last-minute changes to strengthen
protections for migrant children.
Advertisement
The House bill ignores the White House’s request for additional enforcement
money, garnering a veto threat from administration officials and opposition from
congressional Republicans. The Senate has been working on its own version that
is also expected to come to a vote soon.
Lucero Gerrald, 22, son Gael Ria and daughter Ilene Aquemi sit in El Paso with
Darlene Perez, 32, and her daughter Natalie Jimena. On Sunday, volunteers in El
Paso tried to deliver diapers and other goods for the Clint facility, but were
turned away.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
In a closed-door meeting with rank-and-file Democrats on Tuesday morning,
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) urged lawmakers to come together around
the House bill rather than be left with no counter to the measure from the
GOP-controlled Senate.
“A vote against this bill is a vote for Donald Trump and his inhumane ...
attitude toward the children,” Pelosi said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) showed no appetite to consider
the House bill.
“The idea here is to get a signature,” he said, referring to approval by
President Trump. “I’m hoping that the House will conclude that [the Senate bill
is] the best way to get the problem solved.”
On Tuesday, however, Trump blamed Democrats for what he described as efforts to
block the emergency funding.
Trump said he was “very concerned” about conditions in migrant detention
facilities but contended, without evidence, that conditions were better under
his administration than under that of President Obama.
He added he did not ask Sanders to step down, but said he “knew” the change at
the top of the agency was coming. The president and his closest aides kicked off
a purge of top Homeland Security officials in April that has left roughly a
dozen leadership vacancies.
Sanders’ departure from the agency charged with overseeing ports of entry,
temporary processing of migrants and the Border Patrol prompted another
shuffling of top Homeland Security officials. Acting Immigration and Customs
Enforcement Director Mark Morgan has moved over to Customs and Border
Protection, and acting Deputy Director Matt Albence will move up to lead ICE, a
Homeland Security official confirmed.
“This is your organization … own it!” Sanders wrote in a Tuesday memo to his
agency, in which he did not directly address the controversy about the
children’s detention. “Don’t underestimate the power of momentum as you continue
to tackle some of this country’s most difficult challenges.”
Trump once fired Morgan, who was Border Patrol chief in the last months of the
Obama administration. Trump officials brought Morgan back to be ICE’s acting
chief less than two months ago. He pushed for the widespread raids set to target
thousands of families for removal last week before Trump — who’d first announced
the raids on Twitter — pulled back.
At the Clint facility, 127 of the migrant children transferred out because of
poor conditions were subsequently moved back, an official confirmed.
(Paul Ratje / AFP / Getty Images)
Morgan will inherit a widening problem following the reports of unsanitary
conditions at the Clint station and others. Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) said
Monday the federal government had removed most of the children from Clint, with
roughly 30 remaining.
But Tuesday, a Customs and Border Protection official confirmed that 127 of the
migrant children transferred from the Clint station were subsequently moved
back.
When asked why the children had been returned, the official said it was “because
the numbers have been reduced,” and the Health and Human Services Department’s
Office of Refugee Resettlement “was able to take a number of them.”
There was no word on whether improvements had been made to the facility in
response to the reported conditions.
Progressive Democrats were able to secure several changes to the original House
bill that would institute reforms, such as new requirements that the federal
government establish care plans for people in its custody and replace
contractors who fail to meet care standards. It would also provide $2 million in
additional funding for the needs of immigrants in removal proceedings.
Even with the changes, several Democrats said the bill does not go far enough.
But they suggested they planned to vote for the bill anyway, as a first step
toward addressing the crisis.
“This bill is a desperate measure for a desperate situation,” said Rep. Raul
Ruiz (D-Palm Desert).
Lawmakers are hoping to act this week before Congress leaves for a weeklong
Fourth of July recess.
“Children ripped away from their parents, kept in cages, denied nutrition,
hygiene, diapers, toothbrushes,” Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.)
said on the Senate floor. “How can our country do this? And all because some in
the president’s purview think that might deter immigrants.”
On Sunday, volunteers in El Paso tried to deliver diapers, soap, sleeping bags
and stuffed animals to the Clint facility, according to Abigail Seldin, a
Washington-based entrepreneur who purchased the items to be delivered and
described herself as a “concerned mom.”
“I picked the same size diapers that my toddlers wear each day,” Seldin said in
an interview.
The donations were rejected, she said.
Trump administration lawyers argued in court last week that the government
shouldn’t be required to provide migrant children in its custody with soap,
toothbrushes, towels, showers or a full night’s sleep inside facilities like the
one in Clint.
Border Patrol officials have not responded to questions about conditions at the
Clint facility from the Associated Press, which was the first to report on the
situation. In an emailed statement Monday, officials said: “Our short-term
holding facilities were not designed to hold vulnerable populations, and we
urgently need additional humanitarian funding to manage this crisis.”
Sanders stressed in a telephone briefing for reporters early this month that the
agency was dealing with the largest monthly total of apprehensions at the border
in more than a decade. “We are in a full-blown emergency,” he said.
Attorneys who visited the Clint facility last week said older children were
trying to take care of infants and toddlers, the Associated Press reported
Thursday. Some had been locked for three weeks inside the facility, where 15
children were sick with the flu and 10 others were in medical quarantine.
“How is it possible that you both were unaware of the inhumane conditions for
children, especially tender-age children at the Clint Station?” Escobar asked in
a letter sent Friday to Sanders and U.S. Border Patrol chief Carla Provost.
Although it’s unclear where all the children held at Clint had been moved,
Escobar said some were sent to another facility on the north side of El Paso
called Border Patrol Station 1.
But Clara Long, an attorney who interviewed children at Border Patrol Station 1
last week, said conditions were not necessarily better there. Long and a group
of lawyers inspected the facilities because they were covered by the Flores
settlement, a Clinton-era legal agreement that governs detention conditions for
migrant children and families. Trump officials have pushed to end the Flores
settlement.
Many children interviewed had arrived alone at the U.S.-Mexico border, but some
had been separated from their parents or other adult caregivers including aunts
and uncles, the attorneys said.
Customs and Border Protection has confirmed that when children arrive at the
border with a relative other than a parent, they are separated and considered
unaccompanied. Such cases are categorized as “family relationship in question”
and not separately tracked, the agency said.
Government rules call for children to be held by the Border Patrol in their
short-term stations for no longer than 72 hours before they are transferred to
the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, which houses migrant
youths in facilities across the country through its Office of Refugee
Resettlement while authorities determine whether they can be released to
relatives or family friends.
Last month, Sanders appeared at a news conference with Sen. Lindsey Graham
(R-S.C.) and addressed photos that had emerged of other rough conditions in
which children were being held by his agency.
“Children should not have to sleep on the ground under Mylar blankets,” he said.
“This is the United States of America.”
O’Toole and Haberkorn reported from Washington, Hennessy-Fiske from Houston.
Times staff writer Cindy Carcamo in Los Angeles and the Associated Press
contributed to this report.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
World & Nation
Molly O'Toole
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Molly O’Toole is an immigration and security reporter based in the Los Angeles
Times’ Washington, D.C., bureau. Previously, she was a senior reporter at
Foreign Policy and a politics reporter at the Atlantic’s Defense One. She has
covered migration and security from Central America to West Africa to South
Asia. In 2020 she was awarded the first-ever Pulitzer Prize in audio reporting
with the staff of This American Life and freelancer Emily Green for “The Out
Crowd,” investigating the personal impact of the Trump administration’s “Remain
in Mexico” policy. She was also a 2020 finalist for the Livingston Awards. She
is a graduate of Cornell University and NYU, but will always be a Californian.
Jennifer Haberkorn
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Jennifer Haberkorn covers Congress in Washington, D.C., for the Los Angeles
Times. She has reported from Washington since 2005, spending much of that time
roaming the halls of the U.S. Capitol. Before arriving at The Times, Haberkorn
spent eight years at Politico writing about the 2010 healthcare law, a story
that took her to Congress, the states, healthcare clinics and courtrooms around
the country. She also covered Congress and local business news for the
Washington Times. Haberkorn is a native of the Chicago area and graduated from
Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis.
Molly Hennessy-Fiske
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Molly Hennessy-Fiske was a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times from 2006 to
2022 in Houston, Los Angeles, Washington and the Middle East as bureau chief.
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