Drawings from children detained by ICE in South Texas have sparked outrage and revealed worrying conditions behind bars.
ProPublica received a handful of written letters from young children detained at Dilley Immigration Processing Centre in Texas, where some detainees have been behind bars for six months or more.
It’s the same facility where little Liam Ramos was held with his father before a judge demanded his release.
There have been reports that food served to those inside is contaminated with mould and worms, and the facilities are said to be overcrowded.
The centre is also the only ICE facility which is holding families – some 750 of them – with hundreds of children.
In the letters from children inside Dilley’s walls, they drew their families, rainbows and wrote about missing their lives before ICE detained them.
Susej, a nine-year-old girl, wrote: ‘I have been 50 days in the Dilley Immigration Processing Centre…I miss my family in my country, so now I want to go to Venezuela.
‘But my mom does not want to leave because she wants a better future for me. Seeing how people like me, immigrants, are treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to the U.S. looking for a good and safe place to live, and my mom was looking for a Good job.’
14-year-old Ariana has been detained for 45 days, and said her younger siblings haven’t been able to see their mother in a month.
‘All kids are being damaged mentally, I witness how they’ve been treated. They don’t have schools, doctors; all they have are nurses… people are always sick.
‘Serious situations happen, and the officers don’t take them seriously enough; there are no consequences, they don’t care.’
‘The officers have a bad manner of speaking to residents when they are asking anithing the workers treat the residents inhumanely, verbally, and I don’t want to imagine how they would act if they were unsupervised,’ Gaby, 14, wrote.
Maria, a nine-year-old, said: ‘I have fainted 2 times here inside. When I arrived every night, I cried, and now I don’t sleep well. I felt that being here was my fault…’
The US government has claimed that the Department of Homeland Security has already ‘removed more than 700,000 illegal aliens’.
The heartbreaking letters were revealed as ICE agents have been accused of using more outlandish tactics to ensnare illegal migrants.
In the past, immigration authorities have sometimes used disguises and other deceptions, which they call ruses, to gain entry into homes without a warrant.
As the sweeping immigration crackdown continues in the US, legal observers and officials say they have received a growing number of reports of federal agents impersonating construction workers, delivery drivers and in some cases anti-ICE activists.
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