Almost every story reported within the last week regarding the abhorrent conditions migrant children have been forced to endure in the custody of Customs and Border Patrol have one thing in common: They are all based on second-hand accounts.
Journalists have been forced to rely on the eyes and ears of lawyers and advocates who visited the facility in Clint, Texas, where some 300 children have been living in torture-like conditions worse than some political prisoners have endured. That's because the Trump administration has kept reporters at bay, both away from the facilities and without access to interviews with administration officials. Photographs and recordings of the conditions and the migrant children are almost nonexistent, putting a stranglehold on the information that can reach the America public. Remember that heart-wrenching recording in 2018 of separated children sobbing for reunification with their parents? It too was recorded by a civil rights attorney and later published by ProPublica, but the Trump administration isn't too keen on letting another PR nightmare like that reach the public again.
“If journalists had access to the detention centers at the border where children are being held in filthy conditions, those centers would not exist,” Elora Mukherjee, an immigrants rights attorney who interviewed children at the Texas facility, told The Washington Post. “If videos were released there would be massive changes” because the public outcry would be enormous.
Immigration reporters, such as The New York Times' Caitlin Dickerson, say the press blackout has gotten worse since December, when two children died in federal custody. Another five children are known to have died in U.S. custody since then.
Getting the story out can make a major difference. The ProPublica recording touched off public fury that resulted in the Trump administration officially altering its forced separation policy, though the government continues to separate children from nonparent elders who accompany them during border crossings. And on Tuesday, reports emerged that acting CPB chief John Sanders was expected to resign soon (although Trump officials predictably said his ouster didn't have anything to do with the fact that children under his watch had been subjected to torture).
That said, this sick nightmare, perpetrated by the U.S. government on a powerless population of children, is far from over. More than 100 of the 300-some children who were moved from the Clint facility to a tent facility in El Paso have now reportedly been moved back to the Clint facility. Just like the Trump administration supposedly stopped separating children from their parents but then continued separating children from grandparents, aunts, and uncles, the government will continue to commit these horrors at Trump's direction as long it possibly can without being discovered.
In fact, just look at how bogus this latest piece of information is—a "CPB official" on background telling reporters that he doesn't buy the reports about the squalid conditions at the Clint facility.
Why doesn't that CPB official actually go on record and give his name? These background assurances that everything is okay absolutely stink. If you're so sure, put your name to it or shut up. The lawyers and advocates gave their names. If you agree with that sentiment, tweet it!