Lights for Liberty – Detention Camp America
It’s a sad commentary on the state of this country that we have to hold rallies protesting the existence of migrant detention camps. It’s worth repeating–migrant detention camps–with conditions bordering on concentration camps according to some accounts–in the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”
A recent ABC News report described conditions at some camps:
From sleeping on concrete floors with the lights on 24 hours a day to no access to soap or basic hygiene, migrant children in at least two U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities face conditions one doctor described as comparable to “torture facilities.”
Such reports led to a series of Congressional visits to these detention sites, which confirmed how bad conditions there are. As Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted in some of her public remarks, the appalling condition of detainees occurred with the CBP on their best behavior and under official public scrutiny. We know things are far worse behind closed doors, as a recent ProPublica expose of a secret 10-15 Facebook group containing Border Patrol officials revealed. The entire culture of the CBP and ICE are rotten to the core–filled with racism, sexism, homophobia and white nationalism.
Youth participants remind us “Don’t Look Away”.But you don’t have to take my word for how bad things are.
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the US government has already called attention to the crisis in the migrant detention facilities. Their May 30, 2019 report was titled: “Management Alert – DHS Needs to Address Dangerous Overcrowding Among Single Adults at El Paso Del Norte Processing Center.”
The OIG report noted the following:
“Specifically, we are recommending that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) take immediate steps to alleviate dangerous overcrowding at the El Paso Del Norte Processing Center (PDT)… Because DHS’s corrective action is critical to the immediate health and safety needs of detainees, who cannot continue to be held in standing-room-only conditions for weeks until additional tents are constructed, we consider the recommendation open and unresolved. We will continue our spot inspections of the southern border facilities and may revisit El Paso sector sites to monitor overcrowding.”
The data provided by the OIG report also makes clear the scale of the problem, as you can see from the following table.
Here are a few images from the Lights for Liberty rally and vigil in Cleveland on Friday night. I’m not sure how long they had been planning for the local event, but there was good turnout for a Friday night event. The group Lights for Liberty had billed July 12th as a National Day of Mobilization.
The location for the rally, Market Square, was also a good location given its historical links with Cleveland immigrant communities, as noted in the historic signage in the park.
It’s not entirely clear what will happen next in this unfolding story, but at least for now it is clear that we need to keep putting pressure on the US government and elected officials, while doing our best to support migrant advocates like RAICES, the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, and the Immigrant Justice Network who are on the front line of these fights.
