,
10 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
THREAD-Human rights abuses at the border newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/c…
"I have been hearing stories about the hielera, or ice box. This is what people call cold cells with concrete floors, or the mobile-mini [detention sites] that are littered around the hinterlands of south and central Texas.
"I have been hearing clients talking to me about these since I started doing this work, in 2003. And I spoke with young African men in their twenties, ten years ago. I have spoken with young Central-American children this year.
"And across geography, across age, across language, I have heard consistent stories about mistreatment and abuse inside of Customs and Border Protection custody. You hear about the refrigerated boxes people get shoved in.
"You hear about the separations of people from their children. You hear about manhandlings and rough treatment, unnecessary body-checking, shoving, pushing, hitting. You hear about cruel and abusive language:
“Welcome to hell”; “If you think this is bad, wait until what you have in store for you next”; “You have no rights”; “If you ask for asylum, we will keep you here forever.”
"And you cannot hear about this again and again and again, over years, and think it is an aberration from training. No, this is the training that the officers are receiving. And it has not changed in nature.
"We have seen this evil for many years, but it has increased dramatically in scale because of the explosion of funding over the past ten, fifteen years.
"It has increased in efficiency because of the collusion between the government and Big Tech, who are the backbone of ice and Border Patrol, making their sinister acts more efficient.
"And it has increased in severity because we have a Commander-in-Chief who is telegraphing to all of these officers from the top down that he wants to see the cruelty, that he wants them to make people’s head hit the top of the car door."
