HOUSTON (AP) – A day after giving birth at a Texas border hospital, Nailet and her newborn son were taken by federal agents to a detention facility that immigrants used to call “refrigerator”.
Inside, large cells were filled with women and their young children. Nailet and her son were accommodated with 15 other women and were given a sleeping mattress, with little space for distance, despite the coronavirus pandemic, she said. The lights were on all the time. Children sneezed and coughed constantly.
Nailet, who kept her newborn warm with a quilt she bought at the hospital, told the Associated Press that Border Patrol agents did not tell her when they would be released. She and her son were detained for six days at a border patrol station. This is twice the time allowed by federal rules.
“I had to constantly insist that they bring me tissues and diapers,” said Nailet, who left Cuba last year and asked that her surname not be released for fear of retaliation if she were forced to return.
A large number of immigrant families have crossed the US-Mexico border in the first weeks of President Joe Biden’s administration. Warning signs are emerging from the border crises that marked former President Donald Trump’s mandate: hundreds of newly released immigrants are being left with nonprofit groups, sometimes unexpectedly, and accounts like Nailet’s long-term detention facility. short-term are growing.
Measures to control the virus drastically reduced space in detention facilities that were overwhelmed during a wave of arrivals in 2018 and 2019, when reports emerged of families huddled in cells and unaccompanied children having to care for each other.
Most Border Patrol stations are not designed to serve children and families or keep people for long. To deal with the new influx, the agency reopened on Tuesday a large tent installation in South Texas to house immigrant families and children.
In a statement last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that some of its facilities have achieved “maximum secure holding capacity” and cited several challenges: COVID-19 protocols, changes in Mexican law and limited space to retain immigrants.
“We will continue to use all current authorities to avoid keeping individuals in a congregated environment for any length of time,” said the agency, which declined an interview request.
Meanwhile, long-term detention facilities for children who cross the border alone – some sent by parents forced to wait in Mexico – are 80% occupied. US Health and Human Services, which manages these centers, will reopen an emergency facility in an old oilfield workers’ camp in Carrizo Springs, Texas, as early as Monday. It can accommodate about 700 teenagers. Outbreak facilities cost an estimated $ 775 per child per day, and Democrats criticized them harshly during the Trump years.
There is no clear determining factor for increasing the crossing of families and children. Some experts and advocates believe that more people are trying to cross illegally now that Biden is president, believing that his government will be more permissive than Trump’s.
Many have waited for a year or more under Trump’s “Stay in Mexico” program, which forces asylum seekers to stay south of the border while a judge considers his case. The White House is not adding people to the program, but has not said how it will resolve the pending cases. He also refused to expel unaccompanied children under a public health order related to the pandemic issued by Trump.
Others cite the consequences of natural disasters in Central America and turmoil in countries like Haiti.
The United States has also stopped sending some immigrant families back to parts of Mexico, mainly areas of the state of Tamaulipas, in front of southern Texas. The change in practice appears to be uneven, with immigrants being expelled elsewhere and no clear explanation for the differences.
A law has come into force in Mexico that prohibits keeping children in detention centers for migrants. But Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the agreements with the United States during the pandemic remain “on the same terms”. The statement noted that “it is normal for adjustments to be made at the local level, but that does not mean that the practice has changed or stopped”.
Some pregnant mothers, such as Nailet, who were refused entry to the US cross again during labor. Their children become American citizens by birthright. The Border Patrol generally releases these families into the country, although reports have been made of the expulsion of immigrant parents and children born in the United States.
In the case of Nailet, CBP said that an unforeseen increase in the number of families crossing the border near Del Rio, about 150 miles (241 kilometers) west of San Antonio, led to his prolonged detention.
Supporters say the authorities should have released Nailet quickly, as well as other families with young children, and should speed up processing to avoid delays. Authorities have long resisted what they call “catch and release”, which they say inspires more immigrants to try to enter the country illegally, often through smugglers linked to transnational gangs.
Still in labor, Nailet took care of her newborn in the cold cell. When she told border agents that the hospital said to return on February 1, she said they refused to take her.
CBP says Nailet and her son passed a health check on Wednesday night.
She was released on Thursday and taken to a hotel with the help of a nonprofit group, the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, which is one of several organizations that receive large numbers of immigrant families after leaving government custody. .
Dr. Amy Cohen, a child psychiatrist and executive director of the immigration advocacy group Every Last One, described how detention at the border can traumatize a newborn: the cold, the constant light, the stress emanating from her nursing mother .
“This is an extremely vulnerable time,” she said. “He’s consuming the stress she’s feeling. This is your first exposure to the world outside the womb. This is extraordinarily cruel and dangerous. “
An earlier increase in illegal border crossings, combined with delays in processing families, has led to dire conditions at several border stations in 2019, with food and water shortages and children in many cases taking care of themselves.
The previous year, when the Trump administration separated thousands of immigrant families under its “zero tolerance” policy, many people were arrested in a converted warehouse in south Texas. Thousands of children taken from their parents were in government custody, including emergency facilities in Tornillo, Texas, and Homestead, Florida.
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Associated Press journalists Christopher Sherman and María Verza of Mexico City contributed to this report.