JUST IN: Images Of US Border Facility Shows Immigrants Wrapped In Mylar, Packed Like Sardines (VIDEO)

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency is battling a lawsuit from immigrant rights advocates who have obtained a series of shocking pictures of the appalling conditions at a detention center in Tucson, Arizona.

immigrants
Image via American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona

The pictures, taken from CCTV footage for use as exhibits in the court case, show a number of around 15 detainees in a holding cell. Forced to sleep on a concrete floor without mattresses or bedding, except emergency Mylar blankets, they are packed together so tightly, they literally have no room to move.

One picture in the series shows a mother changing her baby’s diaper on a bare, trash strewn floor.

immigrants
Image via American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona

The cells, which were not designed for overnight use, are routinely filled beyond their limits with detainees including women, children, and infants. It has been alleged they are deliberately kept at temperatures so low, they are known to the detainees as hieleras – iceboxes.

The CBP has consistently denied this, but the images show beyond doubt it is true.

Dan Pochoda, senior counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arizona, said in a press release:

“Migrants detained in the Tucson sector have long suffered horrific conditions. It is unconscionable that the federal government continues to detain people including infants in this manner. The Border Patrol continues to operate in violation of U.S. and international law as well as its own standards without being held accountable for these egregious abuses.”

The press release also refers to an expert witness who said he had never seen such conditions in his 35 years experience of correctional facilities. He added he had:

“…never been in one that treats those confined in a manner that the CBP treats detainees.”

The ACLU is one of an alliance of activists who are pursuing the case through court. Louise Stope of the allied law firm Morrison & Foerster made the point that the CBP has worked consistently to obstruct the lawsuit since it was filed in June 2015. She said:

“Every step the government has taken in response to this lawsuit has been designed to delay this suit and hide the conditions present at these facilities. The government should be using the resources they are wasting in court to provide basic human necessities to those in its custody.”  

Allegations of inhumane treatment and systemic abuse at Tucson and other CBP centers along the Mexican border are by no means new. A lengthy independent report entitled “Deprivation Not Deterrence”, published in October 2014, contains numerous harrowing accounts from former detainees.

One of the report’s compilers mentions that the CBP buildings that are in remote areas along the Mexican border are mostly windowless. He said:

“When we asked former detainees how long they were held in the border stations, we heard over and over again that they did not know. We asked why, and they said because they weren’t sure whether it was night or day.”

The focus of this lawsuit is the centers that hold immigrants immediately after they have crossed the border. In the longer term, immigrant detention is now a $2 billion industry.

Watch this BBC News insight into it.

h/t to the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona

Featured image via Makaristos available under a Public Domain Mark 1.0 license.