Dark Christmas for 15,000 Migrant Children in US Detention

The twisted legal logic of detention makes for a dark Christmas for thousands of migrant children from Central America at the Tornillo Detention Center of the United States.

News ID: 442697

Date: 28 December 2018 - 18:02

RNA - Driven from their homes and fearing for those left behind, the traumatized children and babies are not planning any procession around the perimeter of the detention center in the Texas desert. On the Mexican side, beyond the sprawling tent city, the situation is the same for thousands of migrants too, including single mothers. They are also forgotten and terrified.

Particularly on this holiday that celebrates children, the Christmas in Tornillo is not what the 2,800 migrant children inside were actually dreaming to experience in the “sacred space” of the US. They know they are forgotten and they cannot break the silence.

It sends a clear message to the world community: No human rights once you cross the Mexican border and head to the United States. You are alone and you will be forgotten. Even if you are children, no one will hear you in the Department of Homeland Security, including those separated from their families. No one will intervene.

The agonizing situation gets worse to hear that there are now at least 15,000 children in detention centers across the US - following an executive order issued by President Donald Trump when he took office in January 2017. They have no time to celebrate Christmas or the New Year or their new-found “freedom” and “human rights”. It was the same false expectations that led to the death of Jakelin Caal Maquin, the 7-year-old from Guatemala who died of dehydration recently while in US custody. On Christmas Day, another Guatemalan child, 8, also died in US custody. Who knows how many more will die amid the anti-migrant hysteria on New Year’s Eve?

According to Fars News Agancy, it is sad to also realize that the United Nations doesn’t commit itself to bring attention to and protest the treatment of these children, let alone take action. No official at the UN bothers to raise awareness and call on the US government to put an end to the shocking and large-scale imprisonment of children in what looks like overflowing concentration camps for children and babies. The US government should be ashamed of itself, because it is holding these innocent children hostage with no reason or justification, which amounts to torture per international humanitarian law and UN Charter.

Speaking of the UN, the world body has already called on the US to stop detaining irregular migrant families and separating children on its frontier with Mexico, saying this breaks international law. UN Human Rights Watch has said, “The US should immediately halt this practice of separating families and stop criminalizing what should at most be an administrative offense – that of irregular entry or stay in the US.

However, the world body is yet to walk the talk in Geneva. Geneva Conventions say entering a country without the relevant papers is not a criminal offense and migrant children and infants should not be detained or separated from their mothers. These people have been driven by terrorism and deepening violence from criminal gangs and drug traffickers in Central America. They were forced to cross the US border illegally to seek asylum, and for this they shouldn’t be locked up, forgotten and deported.

There is nothing normal in that. Under Geneva Conventions, detention is never in the best interests of migrant children and always constitutes a child rights violation. The United States - the only country in the world not to have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child - still has obligations as a signatory to that treaty and as a party that has ratified other rights treaties. It still has international, national and religious obligations to preserve family unity and protect Central American refugees. They have the right to receive international protection.

The US government must overhaul its draconian immigration policies and find alternatives to detention of migrant children and their parents from the very beginning. Migrant children shouldn’t be treated like criminals and babies shouldn’t be separated from their families in order to prosecute their parents for crossing the border from Mexico illegally. It is also wrong to keep vulnerable families together in detention centers and crowded facilities during immigration proceedings. They shouldn’t be handcuffed to chairs with bags over their heads, or left naked in cold concrete cells, often with crying babies and toddlers, while armed guards patrol the halls. Official Washington should put an end to this open torture.

847/940