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Along with my @hrw colleagues @NicoleAustinHil & @MichaelBochenek spoke with children detained in border jails last week. Nicole and I have penned a piece for @CNN on how the US Congress can stop putting these children at risk. cnn.com/2019/06/24/opi… 
The situation we found is unacceptable. The US is holding many kids, including some who are much too young to take care of themselves, in border jails for weeks at a time without contact with family members, regular access to showers, clean clothes, toothbrushes, or proper beds.
Many are sick. Many, including children as young as 2 or 3, have been separated from adult caretakers without any provisions for their care besides the unrelated older children also being held in detention.
We spoke with an 11-year-old caring for his toddler brother. Both were fending for themselves in a cell with dozens of other children. The little one was quiet with matted hair, a hacking cough, muddy pants and eyes that fluttered closed with fatigue.
As we interviewed the two brothers, he fell asleep on two office chairs drawn together, probably the most comfortable bed he had used in weeks. They had been separated from an 18-year-old uncle. When we met them, they had been there 3 weeks and counting.
"Sometimes when we ask, we are told we will be here for months," said one 14-year-old who had also been at Clint for three weeks.
The government has been unapologetic about conditions.
The Trump admin wants more $ to build more child detention centers to hold even more children, citing relatively higher numbers of border arrivals. It is urging Congress' swift approval of the Department of Homeland Security's supplemental budget request. cnn.com/2019/05/15/pol…
But that ask glosses over the fact that more children are in immigration custody because over the last several years the government has slowed down the rate at which children are reunified with their families.
As shown by @NIJC & @wrcommission this is largely due to the fact that the govt has sought to use detained children as bait to arrest and deport the family members who come forward to care for them. immigrantjustice.org/sites/default/…
Based on our interviews, officials at the border seem to be making no effort to release children to caregivers-- many have parents in the US -- rather than holding them for weeks in overcrowded cells at the border, incommunicado from their desperate loved ones.
The conditions we saw this week match previous Human Rights Watch findings on the harms children face in Border Patrol detention. But now it's going on for weeks instead of days. hrw.org/report/2018/02…
Congress should take action NOW-not by approving more $ for detention-but by requiring agents to cease separating kids from family unless that's in their best interest, release and reunify children as soon as possible and cease using them as bait to make immigration arrests.
