The US administration has finally decided to allow journalists into a refugee detention facility that hardly matches Biden’s promises to liberalise immigration policy
As News Front previously reported, among Joe Biden’s campaign promises was the reversal of Donald Trump’s harsh migration policy. Democrats had been criticising the measures taken by the Republican administration for years, so Biden ordered the rollback of his predecessor’s system on the first day of his presidency.
The decision triggered the largest influx of migrants in two decades. Border guards and customs officials have been so overwhelmed that they have had to send in personnel from the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help. Those arriving are being housed in prisons, although more recently Democrats have criticised the Trump administration for this.
The day before journalists managed to get into one of these prisons for the first time. A reporter was recently able to get into one of the prisons for the first time. More than 4 thousand people are kept here in tents behind a fence. Most of them are underage children.
Containers with plastic dividers have been constructed to house the children. Each one is 297 square metres in size. The children sleep in them right on the floor, covered with foil. A video from the scene shows that the containers are overcrowded. According to officials, each holds more than 500 children.
Oscar Escamilla, acting executive director of the U.S. Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley, said 250 to 300 children are housed daily. At the same time, the number of those who leave it is much lower.
Among those held are an infant with a 17-year-old mother and a three-year-old girl being cared for by her eleven-year-old brother. The youngest are kept in small playpens.