Rosy footage has been released showing what life is like inside a Florida detention center for immigrant children separated from their parents after local politicians wanting to inspect the living conditions were refused access.
The Department of Health released the five-minute video of children at the contractor-run Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in South Florida late on Wednesday.
It paints a seemingly promising picture of young children eating together, playing sports, getting medical check ups and completing math and English educational tasks.
Department of Health released the video of children at the contractor-run Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in South Florida late on Wednesday
The video, which was produced with tax-payer money, was released a day after Senator Bill Nelson accused the Trump administration of a ‘cover-up’ after officials denied him entry on Tuesday to the detention center.
Nelson and US Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both Florida Democrats, went to the facility following reports it was receiving detained children who had arrived in the country illegally.
He said 94 children were being held at the facility after being forcibly separated from their parents.
Wasserman Schultz said the facility was being used for an estimated 1,000 children, aged 13 to 17 – most of whom arrived as unaccompanied minors and about 10 per cent of whom are children separated from their families at the border.
She said two other South Florida facilities were being used for younger children.
‘Are they abusing these kids? Are they sleeping on the floor? Are they in cages, like we’ve seen in some videos?’ Wasserman Schultz asked after being barred from the building.
Video shows young children eating together, playing sports, getting medical check ups and completing math and English educational tasks
The video was released a day after Senator Bill Nelson accused the Trump administration of a ‘cover-up’ after officials denied him entry on Tuesday to the detention center
While Wasserman Schultz said her staff were told the lawmakers would be ‘welcomed warmly and allowed into the facility’, Nelson said Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Eric Hargan initially told him it would take two weeks for them to gain access.
‘I think what they’re doing is a cover-up for the president,’ Nelson said.
‘It is an affront as the senior senator of this state that an agency head would tell me that I do not have entrance into a federally funded facility where the lives and health of children are at stake.’
The two politicians revealed on Wednesday that they would be allowed to enter the facility on Saturday after being ‘wrongly denied’.
Several dozen children could be seen earlier in the week playing soccer outside the building behind a chain link fence at the facility, mostly talking and shouting to each other in Spanish.
Earlier in the week, the Department of Health released photos of facilities in Brownsville, Texas and San Diego, California where unaccompanied migrant children were being held.
Several dozen children could be seen earlier in the week playing soccer outside the building behind a chain link fence at the facility
Most of the children spotted at the facility earlier this week could be heard talking and shouting to each other in Spanish
The facility in Homestead, Florida serves both boys and girls aged between 13 to 17 years
Senator Bill Nelson and US Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, both Florida Democrats, were denied entry to the facility on Tuesday
The release of the images and footage came as President Trump signed an executive order ending the policy of family separation for illegal immigrants following widespread backlash after it emerged that children were being held in cages.
Trump’s administration continues to battle the crisis prompted by his decision to arrest every illegal border crosser.
Although he signed an executive order on Wednesday to stop children being separated from arrested parents, the crisis showed no sign of diminishing with questions over when the separated children will be reunited with their families and the Pentagon preparing to house as many as 20,000 under-18s on military bases.
Trump, when he signed his executive order on the issue on Wednesday, indicated that lobbying from Ivanka, who showed him pictures of the caged and kenneled children, and his wife Melania had caused him to have a change in heart.
‘Ivanka feels very strongly about it. My wife feels very strongly about it. I feel very strongly about it. I think anybody with a heart would feel very strongly about it,’ he said.
The first lady also saw the photos from the border and heard the recordings of children being separated from their families.
Immigrant children walk in a line outside the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, a former Job Corps site that now houses them
The two politicians revealed on Wednesday that they would be allowed to enter the facility on Saturday after being ‘wrongly denied’