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Some of a group of 88 adult males press against the window of a cell built to hold 41 people at Fort Brown border patrol station in Brownsville, Texas. Photograph:
New images of children and adults in “dangerously” overcrowded US border patrol facilities in Texas have been released as part of a report from government auditors.
The congressional House oversight committee announced on Tuesday it will hold a hearing next week on the treatment of migrants held in detention facilities at the southern border after a series of reports of poor treatment.
Democratic congressman Elijah Cummings has said the Trump administration has displayed “open contempt” of “basic human decency” in its treatment of migrants.
The report released on Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General warns that facilities in the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas face “dangerous overcrowding” and require “immediate attention”.
One image shows a man squashed in a crowd pressing a cardboard sign to a cell window with the word “help” written on it. He is one of 88 men in a cell meant for 41.
“During the week of June 10, 2019, we traveled to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas and again observed serious overcrowding and prolonged detention in border patrol facilities requiring immediate attention,” the report says. A previous report issued in May had also warned about “dangerous overcrowding” at facilities in the El Paso facilities.
In one photo from the new report, women and children can be seen sleeping on the floor with only Mylar blankets for cover. Several people are wearing surgical masks.
In one facility, the auditors found “some single adults were held in standing room only conditions for a week and at another, some single adults were held more than a month in overcrowded cells”. The auditors say the report seeks to draw attention to “urgent issues that require immediate attention and action”.
DHS has blamed the surge of families crossing the border for straining its capacity. But reports of filthy conditions in some facilities have sparked outrage.
The report comes a day after several members of Congress toured a migrant detention center in Texas. The Democratic New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez described the conditions they witnessed as “horrifying”.
She posted on Twitter that the “officers were keeping women in cells w/ no water & had told them to drink out of the toilets” and said one woman “described their treatment at the hands of officers as ‘psychological warfare’ – waking them at odd hours for no reason, calling them wh*res, etc. Tell me what about that is due to a ‘lack of funding?’”
The Democratic Texas congressman Joaquín Castro says he released video and photos of migrant women being held at a border facility in his state so the public could better understand “awful” conditions under Donald Trump’s policies.
