Photos have recently resurfaced of immigrant children sleeping behind the bars of holding cells as they wait to be processed at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center in Arizona. The pictures, re-published by Arizona Central amid reports the federal government somehow lost track of nearly 1,500 immigrant children, were taken in June of 2014 and feature young boys and girls sleeping on thin mats with the use of even thinner aluminum blankets.
“Young boys sleep in a holding cell” https://t.co/GbBMAyaM01 pic.twitter.com/dhwB8P9Bla— Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) May 29, 2018
Detainees sleep and watch television in a holding cell where hundreds of mostly Central American immigrant children are being processed and held at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Nogales Placement Center. pic.twitter.com/opzn94WoQ8— Iván Ceja #UndocumentedUnafraid (@ivancejatv) May 27, 2018
The photos have sparked outrage and disbelief, particularly that these children-holding cells exist in the United States.
Activist Shaun King posted one of the photos on Instagram, saying, “I saw this photo floating around and didn’t know if it was real. It is. Children of immigrants are being held in cages, like dogs, at ICE detention centers, sleeping on the floor. It’s an abomination.”
Barack Obama’s former speechwriter, Jon Favreau, was another who shared the photo, before realizing they were taken during the time when he served the administration and coupled them with a caption saying, “This is happening right now, and the only debate that matters is how we force our government to get these kids back to their families as fast as humanly possible.”
Favreau deleted the tweets and replaced them with a lengthy explanation of both his decision to delete and the circumstances around the holding cells.
“In 2014, when the Obama administration felt with an influx of unaccompanied minors who showed up at the border, fleeing violence from Central America, the agencies charged with sheltering the children were overwhelmed, and the conditions were often atrocious,” Favreau wrote. “That’s why the government tried to move those children out of those shelters as fast as humanly possible and connect them with their parents, most of whom were already in the United States.”
At this point, however, many had begun to call Favreau a hypocrite for condemning the actions when he thought they were Donald Trump’s doing but quickly trying to explain when it was clear the issues were targeted at Obama. However, Favreau explained the key difference between the two.
“Our immigration system has been broken, and, in many cases, inhumane, for decades,” Favreau wrote. “Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate want to fix that. Most Republicans and Donald Trump do not want to fix that. That is the difference. Democrats want to protect dreamers from deportation, and a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants. We want to keep families together. Trump and the Republicans do not.”
Favreau’s passionate words are in response to Trump’s recent zero-tolerance policy against immigrants who cross the border illegally. From here out, said children are to be separated from their parents and put into foster care.
