Migrant children being housed at a Border Patrol facility near El Paso appeared mostly clean and were being watched by hallway monitors on Wednesday, less than a week since they reported living there in squalid conditions with little care and inadequate food, water and sanitation.
U.S. officials opened the building to journalists, offering an inside glimpse of the station in Clint for the first time since lawyers who met with young migrants there told The Associated Press they saw 250 infants, children and teens locked up for up to 27 days in what was designed to be a short-term holding facility.
The tour came hours before immigrant advocates asked a federal judge to issue an emergency order requiring immediate inspections and access for doctors at border detention facilities like the one in Clint.
The attorneys are also asking for the prompt release of children to parents and close relatives and for the government to be found in contempt of court.
The lawyers who visited the Clint facility described hearing about and seeing children taking care of children, and at least one sick 2-year-old boy without a diaper who had wet his pants, his shirt smeared in mucus. Those interviews contributed to the legal action brought late Wednesday in federal court.
A pediatrician visited with 39 detainees at another Border Patrol center in McAllen, Texas, all but one of them minors, and performed medical exams on 21 infants and children on June 15. In her declaration with the court, she described the conditions there as dire, and said many of the detainees were teen mothers.
"The conditions within which they are held could be compared to torture facilities," said Dr. Dolly Lucio Sevier.
"That is, extreme cold temperatures, lights on 24 hours a day, no adequate access to medical care, basic sanitation, water, or adequate food." Sevier said no child should be held in the facilities even for the minimum of 72 hours "because it is obvious that the dignity and well-being of children is not even an afterthought in the design of the center."