The Cincinnati Enquirer has published a first hand account of the experience of a 16 year old held in an ICE detention facility:
About five weeks ago, a Guatemalan teen climbed a 15-foot border wall made of block and steel columns and illegally entered the country at Yuma, Arizona. Border Patrol agents arrested him and took him up the road to a holding facility in Phoenix.
For 20 days, Edmilson Aguilar Punay says, he saw and experienced how the United States handled immigrant children following an April policy change – a change that created a national outcry.
Edmilson, 16, finally was allowed to travel to Cincinnati, where his mother and siblings live, in early June. But first, his attorney said, he suffered trauma from being in captivity and witnessing the effects of family separation on other migrant youths. Government documents confirm the timeline, attorney Julie Leftwich LeMaster said.
He described his experience,
Edmilson was one of about 30 young men and boys – some as young as 5 – squeezed into an office-sized, windowless room in a U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement processing center in Phoenix, Edmilson said.
“I saw boys, women, pregnant women, women with children, children by themselves, and men," he said through an interpreter. "They put us in a room, and this room was rounded-up young men. And they brought the kids in.”
A single toilet sat in the center of the open room.
"The smell was very bad. It wasn't even separated by a wall," Edmilson said. "They said we had air conditioning, (but) it was very hot in the room."
When guards brought in the youngest boy, he started to cry and scream for his mother.
"And we asked him, `What is your problem? How can we help?' " Edmilson said. "He said, `They took my mom away from here.' We called an immigration officer, and we asked her about this child's mom. And they told him, `Your mom is there. She will come later.'
"And the 11-year-old boy said, `No, his mom is not coming back because she was deported to Guatemala.' And they left this child there by himself.
“Edmilson did not know the time, whether it was night or day. They were fed sugary fruit juice and undercooked pre-packaged containers of chicken soup.
He only used the toilet once in two days.”
You can read the rest of the details here:
www.cincinnati.com/...
Hopefully he and his family will be able to obtain legal status and be left in peace.