Detained immigrant children say they were beaten, stripped, taunted with racial slurs
Immigrant children at one federal detention center were left naked in cells, taunted because of their ethnicity, beaten and strapped to chairs by guards, the New York Daily News is reporting, in the latest twist in the situation making the world recoil at the United States.
According to a lawsuit filed on behalf of a 17-year-old undocumented boy from Mexico, about 30 minors are being held at a federal detention center in Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center, in Virginia, and suffering conditions reminiscent of some of the worst adult prisons in the United States.
The teen said youngsters were taunted with racially tinged phrases such as “Mexican monkey,” given no privacy to use the restroom, allowed only one hour of recreation daily and physically hit, the News reported.
Before being detained in Virginia, the teen also spent time at a federal center in San Antonio and at a residential treatment center in New York.
The details go against claims by some in the administration and in the GOP that conditions at the centers where children are being kept are clean and respectful. The issue over immigrant children being separated from their parents has escalated in the last two weeks internationally, prompting President Trump to buckle to pressure and sign an executive order altering the separation policy. The order, however, does not call for the immediate return of the detained children to their parents.
In the lawsuit, one 15-year-old boy from Honduras described being slammed to the ground and wall, and a 15-year-old said he was tied to a chair with a bag over his head, the News reports. Some of the children describing the abuse are as young as 14.
While some reports have indicated children are becoming suicidal at the centers, the lawsuit alleges that there is no attempt to address the children’s mental health.
One identified child was allegedly told by staff at Shenandoah, “Kill yourself already.”
The suit also alleges that Latino children held at the center were treated differently than white children held there. The suit was filed in October, but its details recently came to light with the outcry over children being separated by parents by the Trump administration in recent days.
Abuse allegations made in April by the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law also have been leveled against the Shiloh Treatment Center in Texas, where staff members reportedly used a “chemical straightjacket” of powerful psychotropic drugs against children who were not behaving.
