It was about a year ago that the media was fixated on unaccompanied minor children from Central America, many of them escaping the violence of narco-state drug cartels and gangs, making the dangerous trek across Mexico to the U.S., often victimized again by the “coyotes” who took them to the U.S. border.
These unfortunate children were victimized again once they got to the U.S. You have been reading for almost a year now about the unsafe conditions of the facilities in which these minor children were detained and warehoused by the U.S. Border Patrol and ICE. These unsafe conditions have now resulted in a lawsuit in Arizona. Lawsuit: Border Patrol mistreats detained immigrants:
Immigrant-rights groups are asking a federal judge to force the Border Patrol to end the “inhumane and punitive conditions” they say many detainees face at Arizona facilities.
The legal papers filed in U.S. District Court name three individuals — a man living in Tucson and two unidentified women — who attorneys say were denied food, adequate clothing and sleep.
Mary Kenney, an attorney with the American Immigration Council, said Wednesday that what the trio experienced is not unique.
A majority of the more than 72,000 people detained in the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector in a six-month period in 2013 — a “representative sample” the lawyers sought through public records requests — endured the same conditions, Kenney said. And while the agency’s own guidelines say holding cells should be used for no more than 12 hours, about 80 percent were held for at least twice that long, a third held for 48 hours and almost 8,000 locked up for three days or more, all in horrible conditions.
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