One year-old Amalia was burning with fever, and had been for days. The medical team she was assigned to brushed it off as a virus and offered Tylenol. But as Amalia’s small form struggled to breathe, she began vomiting. Her weight dropped.
It would take at least eight visits to their medical staff before her mother’s pleas for help were answered. Little Amalia was transferred to a hospital — two, actually — where she was diagnosed with not only Covid, but also bronchitis and pneumonia, said her mother.
Yet as soon as she was stable, she and her mother were returned to their “family” jail cell crowded with several other women and children, in the midst of a measles outbreak.
Amalia’s story is no longer rare but just as alarming. Hundreds of young children are being held in mass detention centers such as Dilley Immigration Processing Center — a city of cages — much longer than the law typically allows. As a result, serious claims of abuse, mistreatment, and medical malfeasance have skyrocketed. Yet monitors, such as members of Congress, have been denied entry, even as watchdog departments created to protect such detainees have been scrapped by the White House.
The Associated Press, which recently covered Amalia’s case, has long reported on detainees, including children, finding worms in their food, losing weight due to lack of suitable meals, suffering from diarrhea due to unsuitable water for infant formula, and being denied necessary medical care by center staff.
AP sources put the number of children at Dilley above 1,300, who according to law are only supposed to be held for 20 days given the psychological trauma such facilities inflict on young children. However, Trump’s administration has allowed detained children, many of whom have asylum claims or legal status, to languish for months.
“The increased detention of children comes as the Trump administration has gutted a Department of Homeland Security office responsible for oversight of conditions inside Dilley and other facilities,” reported the AP.
According to EMS reports, emergency responders have rushed to Dilley “at least 11 times to treat children in medical distress,” since September, reported NBC last week. The transcripts of these calls are harrowing: a six year-old boy fighting for breath as his oxygen levels dropped. Another young child had already suffered three seizures that day.
“In one case involving a 22-month-old in respiratory distress, the boy’s condition was so serious, first responders wanted to fly him to the hospital by helicopter but couldn’t because of bad weather, the records show,” reported NBC.
Children this ill don’t spontaneously become this ill. It takes several hours, if not days, of misery for a sick child to become so ill as to necessitate an air evacuation. Any parent who has kept a midnight vigil beside the bed of a wheezing child knows this agony and fear. Yet Amalia’s mother was forced to endure this torture for more than a week, as was her daughter.
Congress or any number of oversight committees could step in and force Dilley’s private owners —CoreCivic — to provide robust medical care, clean water for formula, and healthy food. They have Constitutional and statutory rights to inspect federal facilities such as Dilley without notice, yet they have increasingly been turned away or outright arrested for even trying.
A dozen members of Congress have since sued the federal government, demanding these constitutional rights be upheld – and a judge found in their favor.
However, as of last month, “U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem quietly signed a new memorandum reinstating the same seven-day notice requirement. The existence of the memo, which had not been shared with plaintiffs or the court, only came to light after three members of the Minnesota congressional delegation were subsequently denied access to an ICE facility in Minnesota, despite having the court order in hand,” wrote Representative J. Luis Correa in a press release.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote of his recent attempt to inspect one such facility that, “it tells you these guys have something to hide. If they’re not letting members of Congress in with less than seven days’ notice, it tells you how much work they know they need to do to cover up and hide the things they don’t want us to see. … The fact they denied me access even with 24 hours’ notice should make everybody deeply, deeply fearful of what is happening inside this facility and facilities like it.”
Some children happen to grab the public’s outrage as images of their arrest go viral, such as the kindergartener Liam Ramos, five, who was photographed in a blue bunny hat while ICE agents used him as bait to lure his mother to the door. His highly publicized case helped free him within days of his capture.
However, hundreds of children just as innocent, scared, and confused are still warehoused in Dilley in cages, dreaming of playing outside and attending school. They try to sleep as the TV blares and lights glare overheard 24/7. They pray they will get to go home some day as their temporary detention drags into months. They are just as deserving of America’s outrage.
“These kids have had scarring from this experience that is likely never, ever going away,” wrote Senator Murphy. “They were in the United States legally, and they got ripped out of the courtroom and put in detention because it has nothing to do with human beings. It just has to do with numbers and terrorizing families.”
American mothers are no shrinking violets. They have nursed babies in the back of conestoga wagons and crossed mountains with toddlers in tow. They have fed armies, grown Victory Gardens, and run for public offices. They are fighter pilots and first responders.
Now they are needed on the front lines of a different war, one being waged against children who cannot fight back, but whose souls are suffering all the same.
It will take more than an act of Congress to protect the children suffering at Dilley; it will take the rage of American mothers.
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How to Take Action
- Sign the petition at Resistbot – https://resist.bot/petitions/PYIUYY
- Take the steps in this document: https://tinyurl.com/dilleybabies
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