New images of children and adults in “dangerously” overcrowded US border patrol facilities in Texas have been released as part of a report from government auditors.
The congressional House oversight committee announced on Tuesday it will hold a hearing next week on the treatment of migrants held in detention facilities at the southern border after a series of reports of poor treatment.
Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings has said the Trump administration has displayed “open contempt” of “basic human decency” in its treatment of migrants.
The report released on Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General warns that facilities in the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas face “dangerous overcrowding” and require “immediate attention”.
One image shows a man squashed in a crowd pressing a cardboard sign to a cell window with the word “help” written on it. He is one of 88 men in a cell meant for 41.
“During the week of June 10, 2019, we traveled to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and again observed serious overcrowding and prolonged detention in border patrol facilities requiring immediate attention,” the report says. A previous report issued in May had also warned about “dangerous overcrowding” at facilities in the El Paso facilities.
In one photo from the new report, women and children can be seen sleeping on the floor with only Mylar blankets for cover. Several people are wearing surgical masks.
In one facility, the auditors found “some single adults were held in standing room only conditions for a week and at another, some single adults were held more than a month in overcrowded cells”. The auditors say the report seeks to draw attention to “urgent issues that require immediate attention and action”.
DHS has blamed the surge of families crossing the border for straining its capacity. But reports of filthy conditions in some facilities have sparked outrage.
The report comes a day after several members of Congress toured a migrant detention center in Texas. The Democratic New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described the conditions they witnessed as “horrifying”.
She posted on Twitter that the “officers were keeping women in cells w/ no water & had told them to drink out of the toilets” and said one woman “described their treatment at the hands of officers as ‘psychological warfare’ – waking them at odd hours for no reason, calling them wh*res, etc. Tell me what about that is due to a ‘lack of funding?’”
The Democratic Texas congressman Joaquín Castro says he released video and photos of migrant women being held at a border facility in his state so the public could better understand “awful” conditions under Donald Trump’s policies.
“There’s a reason these conditions are kept secret because these conditions are awful,” Castro, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, told the Associated Press.
Women held at the facility were “crammed into a prison-like cell with one toilet, but no running water to drink from or wash their hands”, Castro tweeted after the visit. Some had been separated from their children and held for more than 50 days, he said.
Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic colleagues were en route to a facility in Clint, in west Texas, yesterday when ProPublica revealed the existence of a secret Facebook group, branded as a forum for Customs and Border Protection officers, with 9,500 members, some of whom ProPublica linked to public Facebook pages for verified officers.
Castro said because lawmakers have oversight authority, they should not be denied access or the ability to share their findings on the conditions they had seen.
Castro said he holds out hope that Congress will impose standards of care and seek broader immigration reforms, though lawmakers have been unable to do so.
Trump signed an emergency $4.6bn border funding package into law this week after lawmakers split over putting restrictions on how the money can be spent. Some House Democrats wanted more standards on the facilities, but they ran up against resistance from centrist colleagues and those in the Senate. Republicans complained that Democrats delayed the funding.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus led a tour of migrant facilities this week and lawmakers decried the conditions inside the Texas centers.
Castro, whose twin brother Julián is a Democratic presidential candidate, said as Congress needs to “fix a broken system”.
Congress is in recess this week. But Congressman Gerald Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, said “the really heartbreaking testimony” by members who visited the detention facilities “is going to have an impact” on legislation when lawmakers return. “Children really help galvanize attention,” he said.
Associated Press contributed to this report.