Democratic Lawmakers Say Detained Immigrants Are Forced to Drink Out of Toilets
On Monday, a delegation of 21 congressional Democrats toured a pair of Customs and Border Patrol–administered immigrant detention facilities in El Paso and nearby Clint, Texas. While they were en route, ProPublica broke a story about a secret Facebook group for current and former CBP agents in which members post memes joking about the suffering and deaths of immigrants in their custody. Recent posts referred to the visiting lawmakers as "hoes" and "scum buckets"; depicted New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaging in a sexual act with a detainee; and urged officers to throw a "burrito at these bitches." The Border Patrol employs 19,555 agents nationwide; there are about 9,500 members in the Facebook group.
The tone of the visit, which Massachusetts congressman Joe Kennedy III described as "contentious and uncooperative," did not improve from there. After their CBP-guided tour, Ocasio-Cortez told reporters that detainees held in a cell equipped with a broken sink were instead forced to drink out of a toilet. Distraught prisoners told her that only after the congressional visit was announced did CBP officials allow them to bathe for the first time in more than two weeks. They described a campaign of "psychological warfare" waged against them by guards, including denials of medication, random nighttime wake-ups, and misogynist slurs.
The delegation's chaperones confiscated the lawmakers' phones beforehand, but Texas congressman Joaquin Castro, who organized the trip, managed to take a few pictures of what they saw inside.
In a press conference, lawmakers condemned the conditions inside while a gaggle of pro-Trump supporters, assembled for the purpose of defending modern concentration camps, tried to shout them down. "I am tired of the health and safety and humanity and full freedoms of black and brown children being negotiated and compromised and moderated," Massachusetts congresswoman Ayanna Pressley said, as hecklers yelled, "We don't want them here! They're illegal!"
Pressley was undeterred. "Keep yelling!" she said. "Racist words and venom for racist policies."
Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib, who is Muslim, endured taunts about sharia law and jeers of "Go take care of your country!" as she spoke. "I will outwork your hate. I will out-love your hate. And I will always put my country first," she said, addressing the protesters directly. "You can all out-scream me. But I will never stop speaking truth to power."
According to Border Patrol statistics distributed to congressional staff and obtained by Vox, the agency holds between 14,000 and 18,000 people in immigrant detention camps each night, sometimes for weeks on end. The Clint facility is the same one at which Human Rights Watch representatives recently observed hundreds of elementary-school-aged children forced to sleep on concrete floors, without access to toothbrushes or soap. In court, Trump Department of Justice lawyers have argued that given the "shorter-term" nature of these stays, such hygiene items "may not be required."
Originally Appeared on GQ
