US government treatment of migrant children held in detention condemned by eyewitnesses

Migrant children detained by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are not allowed to wash, change their clothes, eat nutritious food, or sleep properly, according to lawyers who visited a facility in Clint, Texas. The eyewitnesses also reported seeing babies and toddlers being looked after by other children.

The accounts come a week after a US government attorney argued before a federal appeal court that the government has no duty to provide migrant detainee children with towels, soap, toothbrushes, or sleep.

A 1997 legal agreement in which the government promised to provide “safe and sanitary” conditions for detained children had not specified these items, justice department attorney Sarah Fabian argued.

The three appeal court judges appeared astonished by the government’s claims. “Are you really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?” …