The day after giving birth in a hospital on the Texas border, Nailet and her newborn son were taken by federal agents to a detention center that immigrants often refer to as “the refrigerator.”
Inside, the large cells were full of women with small children. Nailet and her son were with 15 other women and were given a sleeping pad, with little room to keep their distance despite the coronavirus pandemic, he explained. The lights never went out. Children sneeze and cough all the time.
Nailet, who wrapped her newborn in a blanket given to her at the hospital, told The Associated Press that border guards would not tell her when they could leave. She and her son were held at a border patrol post for six days, twice as much as federal regulations usually allow.
“I constantly had to insist that they bring me wipes and diapers,” said Nailet, who left Cuba last year and asked not to publish her last name for fear of reprisal should she be forced to return.
Many immigrant families crossed the border between Mexico and the United States in the early weeks of Joe Biden’s administration. There are warning signs of the same crises that characterized former President Biden’s tenure: hundreds of recently released immigrants are being handed over, sometimes without warning, to nonprofits, and reports such as Nailet of long-term detentions in centers designed for short-term stays.
Measures to contain the virus have drastically reduced the space available in detention centers overwhelmed by a spike in arrivals in 2018 and 2019, as news surfaced of families crammed into cells and unaccompanied children living for themselves. had to take care of.
Most Border Patrol posts are not intended to serve children and families, or to hold people for the long term. To manage the newcomers, the agency reopened a large tent complex in South Texas on Tuesday that houses immigrant families and children.
In a statement last week, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said some of its facilities had reached their “maximum secure storage capacity” and identified several challenges: COVID-19, changes in Mexican law, and limited space to hold immigrants. .
“We will continue to use all of our current authorities to avoid keeping people in a compound environment for any length of time,” said the agency, which declined an interview request.
Meanwhile, long-term retention centers for children crossing the border alone – some sent by parents who had to wait in Mexico – have an 80% capacity. The federal Department of Health and Human Services, which runs these centers, will reopen an emergency center in a former oil workers camp in Carrizo Springs, Texas at the earliest Monday. It can accommodate about 700 teenagers. The emergency centers cost an estimated $ 775 per store per day and were harshly criticized by the Democrats during Trump’s tenure.
There is no clear factor driving the arrival of children and families. Some pundits and activists believe more people are trying to cross illegally now that Biden is president, believing his administration will be more tolerant than Trump’s.
Many have waited a year or more within Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, which forces asylum seekers to stay south of the border while a judge examines their case. The White House has not added people to the program, but has not said how it will resolve the pending cases. He also refused to deport unaccompanied children under a public health order in connection with the pandemic Trump issued.
Others point to the consequences of natural disasters in Central America and instability in countries like Haiti.
The United States has also stopped sending some immigrant families back to Mexico, especially in the Tamaulipas area, next to South Texas. The change appears to be uneven as migrants are deported in other regions and there is no clear explanation for these differences.
A law has entered into force in Mexico prohibiting the detention of children in migrant detention centers. But Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department said in a statement that the agreements with the United States during the pandemic remain in the same terms. The statement stated that while it is normal for policy adjustments to take place at the local level, it does not mean that the practice has been changed or stopped.
Some pregnant women, such as Nailet, who have previously been denied entry, return to the United States when they go into labor. Your children become US citizens by birthright. The Border Patrol often releases these families into the country, although there are reports of expulsion of immigrant parents and children born in the United States.
In the Nailet case, CBP said an unforeseen increase in the number of families crossing the border at Del Rio, about 150 miles west of San Antonio, extended their detention.
Activists say authorities should have released Nailet and other families with young children quickly and speeded up procedures to avoid delays. Authorities have long opposed rapid release, saying they are encouraging more immigrants to cross illegally, often with smugglers linked to transnational gangs.
Nailet was still in pain from the delivery and was nursing her baby in the cold cell. When she told border agents that she had been ordered to return at the hospital on February 1, she says they refused to take her.
CBP said Nailet and her son passed a health check on Wednesday morning.
She was released on Thursday and transferred to a hotel with the help of a non-profit organization, the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition, one of the organizations that shelters many immigrant families when they leave official custody.
Dr. Amy Cohen, child psychiatrist and executive director of the immigration activist group Every Last One, described how border detention can traumatize a newborn: the cold, the constant light, the stress your nursing mother endures.
“This is a hugely vulnerable moment,” he said. “It consumes the stress she is suffering. This is your first introduction to the world outside the womb. This is extremely cruel and dangerous ”.
An earlier spike in illegal border crossings, combined with delays in processing families, led to dire conditions at several border posts in 2019, with food and water shortages and children in many cases having to fend for themselves.
The year before, when the Trump administration separated thousands of immigrant families within its “zero tolerance” policy, many people were held in a converted warehouse in South Texas. Thousands of children taken from their parents were taken into custody, including centers in Tornillo, Texas, and Homestead, Florida.