Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Wednesday accused the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authorities of regularly holding migrants, including minors, for days in detention conditions violating national and international standards.
“U. S. border agents routinely hold families, including infants, in freezing cells when it takes them into custody at or near the border …
“Human Rights Watch found that conditions in immigration holding cells are in breach of international standards and CBP policies, and likely violate the terms of federal court orders,” the HRW said in a statement.
The watchdog also found out that adult men and teenage boys were usually separated from other family members, while the agency’s policy presupposes keeping families together.
HRW urged the U.S. authorities to treat all immigration detainees with dignity and humanity.
The 44-page report is based on interviews with 110 women and children who had been at some point detained in the CBP facilities.
Since 2015, groups of migrants and lawyers have been engaged in the still ongoing litigation against the CBP over inhumane conditions in the authority’s detention facilities in the Tucson Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol in the southern state of Arizona.
U.S. southwestern states have been facing thousands of migrants who are illegally crossing the border from Mexico.
According to the U.S. Border Patrol figures, 341,084 migrants were apprehended on the country’s southwestern border in 2017.
