Single adults who illegally crossed into the United States from Mexico are being held at some border facilities under miserable conditions for as long as a month, 10 times longer than the 72-hour detainment policy U.S. Customs and Border Protection released in 2015.
The migrants are forced to wait at border facilities due to a shortage of space at Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers, where most are to be transferred, according to several border officials. Border officials say the conditions they are experiencing are far worse than those experienced by children, which have infuriated lawmakers.
“The biggest population that we’re worried about is the single adults that are now being kept in custody for long periods of time,” said Jon Anfinsen, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council’s local chapter in Del Rio, Texas, during a recent interview.
Wesley Farris, NBPC’s second vice president in El Paso, Texas, said the Border Patrol’s small facilities have been turned into “prisons” where up to five times the number of people meant to be held in a cell at a time are being pushed into the tiny, poorly ventilated spaces for weeks.
Farris said that though the adults being held at the 11 stations in El Paso are living in worse conditions than children, but they are not getting help from immigration advocates or lawyers who have been fought on behalf of the kids.
The union official said he was speaking out to ensure standards are being maintained and because the long-term detentions are driving adults to a point where agents fear they are bound to end up dealing with a revolt.
Of all detained populations in El Paso specifically, Cuban adults who have not applied for asylum are being held longer than others because they are primarily adults and not families.
“We’re holding onto large groups of Cubans for two weeks to a month,” said Farris.
Adult migrants who arrive with a child are taken into custody by the Border Patrol, then released into the U.S. or turned over to ICE, which will also likely release them after 20 days, the legal maximum for holding a child or a person traveling with a child.
Farris said Customs and Border Protection does not want to release adults into the interior of the U.S. like it often does with families because the adults are not asylum-seekers and have already committed a misdemeanor by illegally crossing into the country from Mexico. ICE said in June it expected to release 650,000 people into the country this year. The other 350,000, adults who have not made asylum claims, who will end up in its custody this year if current trends hold, will be deported.
Lawsuits for adult migrants being detained too long have been few and far between. A group of migrants held in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas sued the U.S. government in June after some adults who had arrived without children were held up to six weeks.
