Immigration

The Guardian -  Representative Maxine Dexter has a lot of questions. Why were all of the pregnant, unaccompanied minors in the US rounded up and sent to San Benito, a tiny town on the Texas border with Mexico? Are they given appropriate medical care, given their high-risk conditions and Texas’s abortion ban? And most importantly: where are the girls – and their infants – now?

Dexter, a Democratic congresswoman from Oregon and a former critical care physician – one of the few doctors now serving in Congress – detailed these questions in an 8 May letter to refugee and health officials after visiting the San Benito facility and, she said, being blocked from speaking with any of the children. She still hasn’t gotten answers.

In the US, the treatment of immigration detainees has raised concern over rights violations, overcrowding and a lack of medical care – situations that are not transparent even to members of Congress. Senator Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey, says he was sprayed with pepper balls on Monday outside the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Delaney Hall facility, where detainees have spent days on a hunger strike over poor conditions. Health inspectors with the state of New Jersey were denied full access to the facility on Thursday, Mikie Sherrill, the state’s governor, said.

Detainees across the US have said they don’t have safe, nutritious food or adequate medical care, while outbreaks of infectious diseases have plagued facilities, which are often converted warehouses, storefronts or churches that were never meant to house people and frequently lack ventilation.

.... Unaccompanied minors, who are kept through the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), are “uniquely vulnerable”, Rosalind Rogers, a psychologist specializing in the mental health of immigrants and refugees, said at a recent event with Duke University on the health vulnerabilities of children and families in immigration facilities. “They face detention without the support, nurturing, and protection of a caregiver.”

For the unaccompanied children at the San Benito facility, there is the added stress and confusion of being pregnant and alone. The facility has housed pregnant children as young as 13; about half of the pregnancies are the result of rape.

Following reporting from the Guardian and others, Dexter notified the facility in San Benito that she would visit in late April. When she arrived, she was blocked from speaking with or even seeing any children throughout her entire visit, she said.