Migrant children are being held in grim and dangerous situations at detention facilities alongside the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s in keeping with lawyers who visited the facilities in recent days and spoke with kids there. One of those attorneys is Warren Binford, a professor at Willamette University, who described for us what she noticed.

WARREN BINFORD: Many of them are snoozing on concrete flooring, inclusive of toddlers, infants, preschoolers. They are being given nothing however immediately meals, Kool-Aid and cookies – many of them are sick. We are listening to that lots of them aren’t slumbering. Almost all of them are notably unhappy and being traumatized. Many of them have not been given a bath for weeks. Many of them aren’t allowed to brush their tooth except for perhaps as soon as every 10 days. They haven’t any access to soap. It’s exceedingly unsanitary conditions, and we are anxious approximately the kid’s fitness.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: She visited Clint, Texas, and the family holding middle at Santa Teresa in New Mexico. Her team has been doing inspections like this for over twenty years. And I requested her how this one as compared.

BINFORD: This turned into, with the aid of a long way, the worst scenario that I’ve seen not just by using the situations but using the sheer quantity of children who are being stored at this facility and being saved in certainly risky, unsanitary conditions. Literally, one of the children said that there are 100 children in his mobile and that once he first arrived there, there were 300 youngsters inside the cellular. I drove around the outdoors of the compound to try to discover what he changed into relating to. And it’s miles a metallic warehouse that recently turned into set up that Border Patrol stated increased their most occupancy from 104 adults to six hundred. We recognize that they have over 350 youngsters there as of Monday while we arrived and that over a hundred of those youngsters were young children. We noticed no windows in the warehouse. And the youngsters pronounced that they seldom get to move outdoor. One baby mentioned that the highlight of their day is that they can exist within the hallway when they arrive in to smooth the cell. And it’s the highlight of their day.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: These sound worse than actual jail conditions.

BINFORD: They are worse than real jail situations. It is inhumane. It’s nothing that I ever imagined seeing within the United States of America. And that’s why we’ve got gone to the click. We in no way visit the media about our site visits. And after the second day of interviewing these children, you recognize, we are known as up the lawyers who are in fee of this case. And due to the acute situations that we noticed there, we were permitted to speak to the media because kids are dead at the border in these stations. And now we recognize why.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The Trump management officials this week argued in court docket that these children might not require basic hygiene products like cleaning soap and toothbrushes to be held in safe and sanitary situations. What do you are making of that argument?

BINFORD: Well, you understand, obviously, any individual with common experience knows that that is simply absurd. You know, the World Health Organization has indicated that via honestly training to handwash that you could reduce toddler mortality using 50%. These specific children are being saved in cells with open toilets. It is the same area in which these children are spending 24 hours an afternoon. So basically, these children are being compelled to eat, poop and sleep and live in these cells with other kids who’re unwell. There is a lice infestation in at least such cells that multiple kids have pronounced to us. And they may be being given lice combs to pass around. The entire situation is absurd. And there may be nothing secure or sanitary about the situations that we witnessed this week.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: The management says that the kids are in those situations due to the disaster at the border because they’re beaten by the wide variety of households and kids coming into the USA. How do you reply to that?

BINFORD: If you look at the historic numbers of immigrants coming to the US, we are nowhere near the very best range of immigrants that we’ve got coming to the US. But what we see with this populace is that over 70% of those kids have sponsors inside the United States. And maximum of those sponsors are mother and father or another circle of relatives members. And as opposed to placing these kids with their own family at once, they’re detaining those youngsters unlawfully. So sincerely, what the authorities alleged to be doing is shifting the children via these facilities depending on hours, shifting them via the opposite centers in several days after putting them with their families immediately. But it truly is no longer what this administration is doing. According to the child, they’re holding on to these youngsters at a value of $775 an afternoon. And this is essentially what’s developing a backlog.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You mentioned that it’s miles uncommon for an attorney like yourself to speak publicly. I want to invite you why you felt it became essential to breakthrough.
BINFORD: Many of the children that we interviewed are identical actual a while of my kids, you know, who is a long time 9 and 16. And so it’s impossible to satisfy with those children and now not apprehend how the parents are feeling about their kids – now not knowing where they are and the way they’re. There turned into one moment in some other facility where we were this week in which a father was separated from his youngsters. And we instructed the Border Patrol that we would like to meet with the daddy and his circle of relatives together. And he became able to see his youngsters for the primary time because they have been separated. And the little female jumped into her father’s fingers and yelled, papa, papa, and without delay started out crying. It turned into that I needed to shrink back because I could not assist; however, you already know, cry at that factor. So we do the first-class that we will preserve it together. But now and then, it is simply impossible. And this changed into one of those weeks.