Judge Orders Release Of More Border Patrol Holding Cell Images
A federal judge has ordered the release of more photos from inside the U.S. Border Patrol’s holding facilities in southern Arizona. The photos are part of a class action lawsuit that was filed to pressure the agency to clean up the conditions within its holding cells.
The photos show a child crawling on the concrete floors of the holding cells while a parent squats nearby.
In some images, men huddle beneath silvery Mylar blankets intended for survival, not comfort. One photo shows several men huddled beneath one of the blankets in the cold holding facility in Douglas, Arizona. Another shows a mother changing a child’s diaper on top of one of the blankets lying on the floor.
Nora Preciado is an attorney with the National Immigration Law Center, which along with the ACLU and the American Immigration Council, filed the lawsuit against the Homeland Security Department on behalf of several detainees.
"What we are asking the court is to insure that at a minimum Border Patrol abides by its own meager standards," Preciado said. "Again, they’re a floor and not a ceiling but they’re not even following those regarding how they’re supposed to treat people while they detain them."
Federal prosecutors have argued against releasing these images and last year, the judge in the case accused the Border Patrol of purposefully destroying video tape recordings.
A CBP spokesman sent this statement late Thursday: "CBP works to ensure proper conditions and treatment of detainees in all of our holding facilities and is subject to unannounced inspections by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General of these facilities.
"CBP facilities are designed to be short-term in nature to hold individuals until they can be processed and turned over to another agency or repatriated.”
