Human 'cages' removed from southern border

Posted March 2021

By Isabelle Donahue

Staff Editor

Amidst a recent surge of illegal crossings, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have closed the Southern Texas warehouse where families and children were held within chain-linked enclosures, deemed “cages” by the public when the media brought them to light during the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance on immigrating families, for renovations until 2022.

CBP officials have promised that a main planned change includes the removal of the chain-link fence partitions as well as having the entire warehouse redesigned to provide detained migrants with humane conditions. The renovations will take at least 18 months to complete and will include recreation and play areas, as well as permanent kitchens, infirmaries, and showers. The capacity will be reduced from 1500 to 1100. The CBP has stated that there will still be partitions present in the facility, but they will be made of clear plastic and will only be used to separate demographic groups such as mothers with infants from young adult males.

“The new design will allow for updated accommodations, which will greatly improve the operating efficiency of the center as well as the welfare of individuals being processed,” Thomas Gresback, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, told The Washington Post.

The renovation plan includes room partitions that will “afford modest housing accommodations” and “modern processing areas,” he said, along with a recreational area for children.

The Obama Administration opened the McAllen facility, named Ursula, in 2014 after a record number of Central American families began streaming into Southern Texas, leaving U.S. border stations dangerously overcrowded. CBP obtained a large warehouse and hastily converted it into a clean, air-conditioned processing center to accommodate the surge. Inexpensive chain-link fencing was used to create partitions in the cavernous space, but its grim appearance came to symbolize the dehumanizing treatment of migrants in U.S. custody.

During pre-pandemic times, migrant families and children who were taken into custody in the Rio Grande Valley after crossing illegally into the United States typically were taken to the warehouse. Their personal and biometric information was recorded into government databases, and they would sometimes spend several days or more inside the facility, sleeping on mats as they waited for authorities to determine whether they would be transferred to a longer-term detention facility, returned to Mexico, or released into the U.S. But as COVID-19 became more widespread the existing facilities became dangerously overcrowded, CBP took possession of the large air-conditioned warehouse, converting it into a processing center.

Those taken into custody in the Rio Grande Valley were usually taken to the warehouse to have their personal and biometric data recorded by CBP. They would often spend several days at the facility sleeping on mats under foil blankets in an otherwise open space. Authorities would then determine if they would be returned to Mexico, transferred to longer-term detention facilities, or released into the U.S.

“Children were in freezing, packed cages and sleeping on concrete,” said Hope Frye, a lawyer who oversaw a visiting team of inspectors at the Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, more commonly known as the “Ursula” warehouse. The faces of the filthy, ailing, and often tearful children she met there, locked behind fences, are etched in her memory. “It was bone-chilling. Young children were violently ill, separated from their family.”

Department of Homeland Security officials and migration experts have warned that a surge of immigrants is expected in the spring of 2021 as the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the string of hurricanes that have caused flooding and crop damage this fall in Central America.

Immigrant advocates welcomed the news that the facility would be upgraded but cautioned that more fundamental changes were necessary to ensure that migrants were more quickly and efficiently processed, rather than being stranded in crowded facilities for weeks.

“This feels a little bit like window dressing," said Michael Bochenek, senior counsel in the children’s rights division at Human Rights Watch. "It is overdue from the perspective that no one should be housed in cages. The more fundamental shift that needs to happen is rigorous application of federal law and an agency standard that calls for expeditious transfer to more suitable arrangements for children and families.”

President Joe Biden has pledged to reverse the Trump Administration’s approach on the border. His plan calls for cutting off money for an expanded border wall and restoring the process for welcoming asylum applicants into the country while their cases are being heard.