Leaked photos show
immigrant children packed in crowded Texas border facilities
By Kolten Parker, San Antonio Express-News
Updated 9:15 am, Friday, June 6, 2014
SAN ANTONIO — Photos leaked
Thursday from a U.S. Border
Patrol facility in the Rio Grande Valley show overflowing holding
facilities of immigrants, many of whom are children.
The photos, obtained by the
conservative website Breitbart, show hundreds of immigrants believed to be in
the country illegally from Central America and Mexico being held in crowded
concrete rooms similar to a jail cell. Many of the children appear to be teenagers
but some clearly are younger.
The photos have a timestamp
of May 27, 2014.
A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and
Border Protection said the agency has not “officially released any
photos at this time in order to protect the rights and privacy of unaccompanied
minors in our care.”
“The influx of
unaccompanied children across the southwest border has resulted in an urgent
humanitarian situation,” the CBP spokesperson said. “It requires a whole of
government coordinated and sustained response.”
President Barack Obama
has directed an effort, lead by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency, to provide resources and “humanitarian
relief to affected children,” which is a “priority,” the
spokesperson said.
It is unclear who leaked
the photos to Breitbart.
“Given the deteriorating
security and economic conditions in the Central American countries where most
of these children and adult immigrants came from, it's hard to understand how Department of
Homeland Security didn't see this coming,” Sylvia Longmire,
a contributor to Breitbart who focuses on border issues, said on the website.
“Now, the results of this mismanagement are thousands of individuals living in
inhumane conditions for an indeterminate period of time, as well as exhausted
and overwhelmed Border Patrol agents and CBP detention facilities.”
The overwhelming numbers of
undocumented immigrants during recent months has impacted San Antonio.
A temporary shelter at
Joint Base San Antonio Lackland has housed and provided services to 1,820 unaccompanied
minors from Central America since May 18, San Antonio Express-News reporter
Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje reported. The immigration is part of a “surge” of
children said to be fleeing poverty and violence in their home countries,
she reported.
For more details on this
story, including the conditions of the facility at Lackland, read Fletcher
Stoeltje's story at ExpressNews.com or in Friday's print edition of the San
Antonio Express-News.
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