New video gives an inside look at a US Border Patrol detention center in Texas, where more than 1,100 people including young children, are being held in crowded, chain linked cages.
Other footage from inside the McAllen detention center shows children, and adults, wrapped in plastic thermal blankets being ushered in, single file, past armed guards, waiting to lock the chain linked fenced cage behind them.
The footage, which was released by the federal agency after journalists were disallowed from taking their own photos and videos during a press visit Sunday, shows the sparse 22 cells where detainees are sitting, and laying down, shoulder to shoulder.
Approximately 130 children who have been separated from their families are processed through the detention center in the border town.
More than 250 unaccompanied children were processed through the facility on Sunday alone, according to the LA Times.
At this rate, President Donald Trump’s administration could have 30,000 illegal immigrant children in its care by August as prominent voices on both sides of the aisle push the president to halt the family separations.
The first photos since zero tolerance was announced inside the largest Border Patrol processing station in U.S.
Children are separated from adults at the border
Immigrants wait to head to a nearby Catholic Charities relief center after being dropped off at a bus station shortly after release from detention
Trump’s push to decrease the number of illegal border crossings has resulted in the Department of Health and Human Services taking in about 250 children per day, a senior administration official told the Washington Examiner.
That number is expected to remain steady over the next two months, which means HHS would have 18,500 kids in their care by August. Add those to the 11,500 kids the department is already holding and the total could hit 30,000 by summer’s end.
Last month the administration announced a crackdown on illegal immigrants crossing at the Mexico border with Attorney General Jeff Sessions saying the adults would be prosecuted.
That policy resulted in children being stripped from the adults they were traveling with and put in the custody of HHS. Minors cannot be housed with adults facing prosecution, requiring the children to be separated from the adults with whom they are traveling.
Trump was reportedly angered at the record numbers of border crossings reported for April and his administration has fiercely defended the separation policy as a deterrent against the crossing.
They have also pushed the blame to the Democrats with Trump leading the charge against the opposition party.
‘Why don’t the Democrats give us the votes to fix the world’s worst immigration laws?,’ he tweeted Monday morning.
His administration also argues it is simply enforcing the law.
Additionally, the Trump administration is moving forward with a plan to tentatively house children in tent cities located on three Texas military bases due to housing shortage for the minors.
‘[Health and Human Services] is running out of space because of the implications of the zero tolerance policy, but also because we continue to see this uptick in numbers,’ an official told the Washington Examiner last week.
HHS officials are looking at Fort Bliss near El Paso, Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, and Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo.
Democrats, and an increasing number of Republicans, have argued that Trump can stop the separation policy at any time with a flick of his executive pen.
President Bill Clinton on Sunday denounced the practice as a way to leverage Democrats into accepting immigration limits in legislation they would otherwise oppose.
‘These children should not be a negotiating tool,’ he wrote on Twitter. ‘And reuniting them with their families would reaffirm America’s belief in & support for all parents who love their children.’
Hillary Clinton retweeted that message, adding: ‘YES!’
Meanwhile, a growing chorus of Republican voices have joined in with Democrats to encourage Trump to rethink the separation policy.
Even first lady Melania Trump weighed in, with her office telling the DailyMail.com and other news outlets that: ‘Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform.’
‘She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart.’
And former first lady Laura Bush decried the policy in an op-ed published in the Washington Post this weekend: ‘I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart. … In 2018, can we not as a nation find a kinder, more compassionate and more moral answer to this current crisis? I, for one, believe we can.’
And Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said on CNN on Friday: ‘President Trump could stop this policy with a phone call.’
Some in the administration have openly signaled their distaste with the policy and its effects.
President Trump has blamed Democrats for the separation policy
First lady Laura Bush wrote an op-ed denouncing the separation policy
First Lady Melania Trump said in a statement that she’ hates to see children separated from their families’
Some administration officials, like Kellyanne Conway, have signaled a distaste for the separation policy
‘As a mother, as a Catholic, as somebody who’s got a conscience … I will tell you that nobody likes this policy,’ Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway said Sunday on ‘Meet the Press.’
She also tossed the political hot potato down Pennsylvania Avenue to Capitol Hill.
‘Congress passed the law that it is a crime to enter this country illegally,’ she added. ‘So if they don’t like that law, they should change it.’
The president is expected to meet with the entire GOP caucus Tuesday in Congress to drive congressional Republicans toward either of two immigration bills stuck in legislative purgatory.