Safe and Sanitary

ABA Criminal Justice Standards on Treatment of Prisoners

Standard 23-3.5 Provision of Necessities

(a) Correctional authorities should maintain living quarters and associated common areas in a sanitary condition.  Correctional authorities should be permitted to require prisoners able to perform cleaning tasks to do so, with necessary materials and equipment provided to them regularly and without charge.

“'Border Patrol agents told us some of the detainees had been held in standing-room-only conditions for days or weeks,’ the inspector general’s office said in its report, which noted that some detainees were observed standing on toilets in the cells ‘to make room and gain breathing space, thus limiting access to the toilets.’"

(b) Correctional authorities should provide prisoners with clean, appropriately sized clothing suited to the season and facility temperature and to the prisoner’s work assignment and general, in quantities sufficient to allow for a daily change of clothing.  Prisoners should receive opportunities to mend and machine launder their clothing if the facility does not provide these services.  Correctional authorities should implement procedures to permit prisoners to wear street clothes when they appear in court before a jury.

“Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met, the lawyers said.  Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants.  Teenage mothers are wearing clothes stained with breast milk."

(c) Correctional authorities should provide prisoners, without charge, basic individual hygiene items appropriate for their gender, as well as towels and bedding, which should be exchanged or laundered at least weekly.  Prisoners should also be permitted to purchase hygiene supplies in a commissary.  

“Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those who visited said.  They have no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap.

‘There is a stench,’ said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, one of the lawyers who visited the facility. ‘ The overwhelming majority of children have not bathed since they crossed the border.’”

Consider this one of the semi-regular reminders that we have a humanitarian crisis of our own creation at the border.  From descriptions from the lawyers who have been able to go into the detention facilities and speak with their immigrant clients, we have hundreds of children and young people detained in the most deplorable conditions possible. 

Elora Mukherjee, the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School and one of the lawyers who has visited the facilities, said the conditions in the Clint facility were the worst she had seen in any facility in her twelve year career.  “So many children are sick, they have the flu, and they’re not being properly treated,” she said.

“The children are locked in their cells and cages nearly all day long,” Ms. Mukherjee said.  “A few of the kids said they had some opportunities to go outside and play, but they said they can’t bring themselves to play because they are trying to stay alive in there.”

The children told the lawyers that they were given the same meals every day, repetitive and not enough.  “Nearly every child I spoke with said that they were hungry.”

Similar conditions have been discovered at six other facilities in Texas.  At the Border Patrol’s Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, the lawyers found a 17-year-old mother from Guatemala who couldn’t stand because of complications from an emergency C-section, and who was caring for a sick and dirty premature baby.  “They wouldn’t give her any water to wash her.”

We know these conditions are deplorable, and yet our government is arguing that basic sanitation should not be mandated under the legal settlement governing the facilities.  The guidelines require that a facility for children must be “safe and sanitary.”  And our government has argued that soap and toothbrushes are not necessary for safe and sanitary. The Justice Department’s lawyer, Sarah Fabian, argued that the settlement agreement did not specify the need to supply hygienic items and that, therefore, the government did not need to do so.

Here’s the thing - as we can see above, we treat prisoners better than we are treating migrant children at the border.  We make sure that prisoners - murderers, thieves, rapists, predators - we make sure they have clean clothes, they have soap, the are able to wash, to make sure they are fed and clean.  To not do so would be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

So why is it okay to forgo all those necessities at the border?

Is it just out of sight, out of mind?

Or have we really de-humanized them that much?  

Because they are not American?

Or, because they are brown?

Are we that callous as a society?

I know there is a part of society that assumes that everyone crossing the border deserves this fate because they are not coming the right way.  Despite the fact that illegal crossing was previously a misdemeanor - punished by a fine or very minimal incarceration.  Even if we were to treat these migrants as the most heinous criminals, we still see that our treatment of them does not match our traditional punishment for crimes.

That’s even overlooking the minor detail that these are children.  Children we are subjecting to the worst and most inhumane treatment we can offer.

“‘Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?’  Judge William Fletcher asked Ms. Fabian. ‘ I find it inconceivable that the government would say that is safe and sanitary.’”

Me too.

Why It Matters

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Unalienable.  It's a funny word.  One that most everyone has memorized, but likely give little thought to its meaning.  "Incapable of being alienated, surrendered or transferred."  "Unable to be taken away from or given away by the possessor."  A right that belongs to a person that cannot be destroyed.  Regardless of gender, age, race, color, creed, orientation, or nationality.  Something imbued in the person by God that man cannot diminish.  We recognize these are not rights of American citizens only.  They are by nature human rights.  They are part of that great moral code that supersede every country and law.  The higher authority we answer to.

We recognize certain additional human rights that belong to children, for we appreciate the vulnerable state they are in. As citizens of the world, we have codified these in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, a human rights treaty setting out the civil, political, economic, social, health, and cultural rights of children (any human being under the age of eighteen, unless the age of majority is attained earlier under national legislation).  The United States played an active role in drafting this Convention and signed it on February 16, 1995, but has not ratified it.  We are the only United Nations member state that is not a party to the treaty.

This distinction is important because we are committing a human rights violation under the Convention against children at the border by separating them from their families.

Article 9
1. State Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will, except when competent authorities subject to judicial review determine, in accordance with applicable law and procedures, that such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child.  
...
4. Where such separation results from any action initiated by a State Party, such as the detention, imprisonment, exile, deportation or death (including death arising from any cause while the person is in the custody of the State) of one or both parents or of the child, the State Party, shall, upon request, provide the parents, the child or, if appropriate, another member of the family with the essential information concerning the whereabouts of the absent member(s) of the family unless the provision of the information would be detrimental to the well-being of the child.

{emphasis added}

We are separating babies and toddlers from their families to send them to a "tender care" facility.  A TrumpCamp. 

Children separated from their families are ending up in Michigan, clear across the country.

Children have been forcibly injected with medicine and force fed pills, with the children saying they were "held down and injected" with drugs that "rendered them unable to walk, afraid of people, and wanting them to sleep constantly."  One child's prescription cocktail included Clonazepam, Duloxetine, Guanfacine, Geodon, Olanzapine, Latuda, and Divalproex - medications used to control depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder, mood disorders, schizophrenia, and seizures.

A former head of ICE has warned that if families are not reunited soon, there will be potentially hundreds of children that will never see their families again.  Read that again carefully.  If we do not reunite them soon, the United States government has played a role in creating orphans.

This is far bigger than a political issue.  This is a moral issue.  And we as a nation failed by instituting this policy in the first place.

Thankfully, as of this writing the President has "found" the authority to put an end to this practice and to end the policy of separating families.  It seems we have a lot to thank our living first ladies for, including the current First Lady, Melania.

There is, however, still work to be done.

• Write, call, email, pester, hound your Congressmen and women to let them know this policy was unacceptable and that laws should be enacted to prevent it from ever occurring again.
• Let them know we should ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.  
• Let them know we should remain a part of the Human Rights Council.
• Let them know the value of asylum.
• Donate to Kids in Need of Defense. https://supportkind.org/
• To the ACLU.  Here.
• To The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES).  Here.
• Volunteer with the Texas Civil Rights Project, particularly if you speak Spanish.  Here.
• Foster.  If you are able to offer a foster home to an undocumented child caught up in this process, find out from your state authorities about how to become licensed to do so.

The enforcement of this policy may be ending, but the battle is not over.

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

Desmond Tutu

"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out - 
Beacuse I was not a Trade Unionists.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me."

Martin Niemoller