PHOENIX — Advocates are calling for investigation and reform in the immigration system, saying unaccompanied migrant children continue to be abused while in the custody of the U.S. Border Patrol.
The report from The Florence Project summarizes a total of 314 complaints from unaccompanied immigrant children, including physical and verbal abuse and other mistreatment. While the report comes from kids in custody from January 2023 to March 2024, advocates said the problems aren't new.
"A five-year-old telling us how they were separated from grandparents and held for 72 hours without any family," Rocío Castañeda Acosta, advocacy attorney for the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, said.
The complaints come from children ages 5 to 17 detained in federal facilities in Arizona. The report details how four in 10 kids reported verbal abuse, and one in 10 reported physical abuse.
In one complaint, a 12-year-old girl described how she and her sister were called derogatory words while agents laughed. An official threatened a 14-year-old with a pistol, telling the child he would shoot unless they "remained silent".
That's in addition to "extremely cold temperatures", being detained with adults and being held longer than the 72 hours the law allows.
Castañeda Acosta said it's a systemic problem.
"It's heartbreaking for us that we have to hear time and time again the conditions the same and same that we've been reporting since 2009," Castañeda Acosta said.
At the same time that The Florence Project released its report, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center also released its report with similar complaints of abuse.
Now, the complaints have been filed again with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which oversees Customs and Border Protection, one of the world's largest law enforcement organizations
Neither agency responded to 12News' questions regarding the complaints.
"It's a system that shouldn't be charged with taking care of families and immigrant children," Castañeda Acosta said.
As for why action hasn't been taken by the agencies, Castañeda Acosta said only recommendations can be made by the agency, which is essentially investigating itself, and the recommendations aren't required to be adopted.
That's why The Florence Project is calling for an independent investigation, sanctions and child welfare professionals to be on staff at the southern border facilities, like a Congressional directive in 2022 told DHS to do, in addition to other measures.
"I think it's very difficult in this political environment where we're using immigrants as a scapegoat and there's so much hate and dehumanization. But we're going to continue to do this because we're elevating the experiences that hundreds of children have shared with us, and we want them to be highlighted," Castañeda Acosta said.
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