Demonstrators arrested while protesting the Dakota Access oil pipeline were placed in "dog kennels" and marked with numbers, activists told The Washington Post.
Protest organizer Mekasi Camp-Horinek said police placed himself and his mother in one of the metal enclosures and wrote a number on his arm, telling the Los Angeles Times that there was no bedding or furniture in the cage.
Several other activists gave similar accounts.
Responding to the allegations, the Morton County Sheriff's Department issued a statement saying that temporary holding cells, made of chain link fences and used for mass arrest situations, were installed "until the Correctional Center [could get those arrested] processed into our facility or transferred to another facility in North Dakota.
"The temporary housing units have been inspected and approved by the ND Department of Corrections," and, while there, detainees "have access to bathroom facilities, meals and drinking water," he added in a statement, according to KFYRTV.com
Explaining the numbers written on the arms of those arrested, Morton County spokesman Rob Keller told The Bismarck Tribune that the numbering was used to ensure that people's property was accounted for when booked as evidence or returned.
Native American tribes claim that part of the 1,172-mile pipeline threatens to pollute their only drinking water supplies and damage cultural lands, according to The Post.
Officials supporting the pipeline, which is slated to carry oil from North Dakota to Illinois, where it can be sent to refineries, is safe and would cause no harm to cultural sites.
Authorities said the mass arrest of 141 people was made when activists refused to leave an encampment they set up on private property in Cannon Ball, North Dakota as part of the protest.
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