美国国家公共电台 NPR Opinion: The 'Filthy And Uncomfortable Circumstances' Of Detained Migrant Children

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SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

If you knew of a child who was being forced by a parent or guardian¹ to sleep on a cold concrete floor in overcrowded surroundings, with screaming lights always on overhead that made it hard to sleep, had limited access to a bathroom, no way to brush their teeth, no soap and no towel, would you do something? Call the police or juvenile² authorities to say, a child is being mistreated; you should do something.

This week, the U.S. government went to court to argue that it's acceptable to keep thousands of migrant children detained in U.S. custody³. Let me repeat that - thousands of children in U.S. custody, exactly in such conditions.

In 2014 - during the Obama administration, it should be noted⁴ - several young immigrants caught along the border said they'd been given dirty water to drink and kept in crowded, frigid⁵ cells. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee⁶ of Los Angeles ruled that children taken into federal immigration custody should be kept in, quote, "safe and sanitary⁷ facilities." The judges of the 9th Circuit, based in San Francisco, upheld Judge Gee's ruling two years ago.

This week, Sarah Fabian, senior litigation counsel for the Department of Justice, told the three-judge panel she thought the phrase was vague. The judges sounded furious. Judge Marsha Berzon asked Sarah Fabian, you're really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn't a question of safe and sanitary conditions?

Judge William Fletcher said, cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you've got an aluminum⁸ foil blanket. I find it inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary. Maybe they don't get super-thread-count Egyptian linen⁹; I get that, he added, and said the soap provided didn't have to be perfumed. But plain soap, he said, sounds like it's part of safe and sanitary. Judge A. Wallace Tashima said, if you don't have a toothbrush, if you don't have soap, if you don't have a blanket, it's not safe and sanitary. Wouldn't everybody agree to that?

Many of us would call the police if we knew children were being held in cold, cramped¹⁰, filthy¹¹ and uncomfortable circumstances. Thousands of children are being held in those conditions in U.S. government facilities.