McALLEN, Texas — As members of Congress visited immigration detention and processing centers Saturday in a Texas city near the Mexican border, tensions flared as protesters gathered and tried to stop a bus ferrying immigrant children.
U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Southfield, joined about 25 other House representatives in visits to a Border Patrol processing center in McAllen, Texas, that is the largest facility taking in immigrant children separated from their families. The group also visited an ICE detention facility about one hour away in Port Isabel, Texas.
"I saw people lying on cement floors, not just human beings, but children," Lawrence said of her visit to the McAllen center. "It was like a sea of this silver, thin piece of Mylar, the metal blanket. Once we walked over to the door, all of these blankets came up and you saw these children ... lying on cement floors."
Late Saturday afternoon, protesters blocked a bus carrying immigrant children outside the McAllen center, according to interviews with protesters and videos. Others, including noted civil rights activist Dolores Huerta, gathered in a McAllen park to protest the. treatment of immigrant children, and families, by the U.S. government.
A place without laughter
Rep. Lawrence and others saw firsthand what children and parents, separated from each other, are experiencing. Lawrence said the kids seemed lifeless and tired.
"I saw exhaustion," she said. "They don't know what's going to happen next. ... They are children and they're just lying around with no emotion. How do you get a cage full of children, from 5 to 8 years old, and there's no activity, there's no laughter. .. They're held in a cage."
A few hours later, Lawrence and other members of the House saw an ICE facility where separated parents are being held.
"You're walking in a facility that looks like a maximum security facility for people who are accused ... of a misdemeanor" for crossing the border, she said. "We talked to the women detainees, and these women were in tears, saying, 'We don't know where our children are. ... We want to know where our children are.' They were in tears."
The Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy has separated more than 2,300 children from their parents or families at the U.S./Mexico border, where thousands have come over the last several months seeking asylum.
After a groundswell of public and political outrage against the separation of children without their caregivers, President Donald Trump signed an order Wednesday pledging the government will stop separating families detained at the border. The Trump administration has not yet clarified whether it will reunite separated children with their parents, or how it will do so.
Lawrence said that there are bureaucratic problems where agencies are blaming each other.
"When we talked to the people in ICE, they say, well, that's HHS (Health and Human Services)," Lawrence said. "What we found is a clear breakdown in the communication between Customs and Border Patrol, HHS, and ICE."
Lawrence said one mother told her she needed money in an account in order to speak to her child. The mom, and others like her, are often poor and desperate and so wouldn't have the money for such an account.
"This has been an emotionally exhausting day," Lawrence said on Saturday. "These women were just weeping, 10 of them, and all of them were saying, I just want my baby."
Tensions flare
In the afternoon, a protest outside the Border Patrol center in McAllen became heated after a bus rolled by carrying what appeared to be young children, said protesters.
Denise Benavides, a Latino activist from Dallas, and Omar Suleiman, a Muslim-American leader from Dallas, recalled seeing girls inside the bus placing their hands on the inside of the window. Some protesters blocked the bus, standing and sitting in the street.
Suleiman said "the bus came out with children. We blocked the bus. Children were crying," he said. "I reached out with my hand on the window."
Protesters chanted "Let the children free" and "We are America," according to a video posted by The United Families of America of the event.
Police later cleared the protesters, letting the bus eventually leave, said protesters.
Suleiman said racism is playing a role in the separation and detaining of immigrants at the Southern border of the U.S.
"This would never happen on the Northern border," he said. "This is blatant bigotry and xenophobia. ... These kids have been so demonized.”
Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress.com or 313-223-4792. Follow him on Twitter @nwarikoo
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