The Trump administration has been using an almost entirely unregulated system of detention and swift expulsions of migrant children and families crossing the southern U.S. border by detaining them at hotels overseen by a private security company, The New York Times reported on Monday.
The policy is part of an aggressive border closure the Trump administration said was necessary to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which has led to the expulsion of more than 100,000 migrants.
Critics charge that the policy puts children in a system without the safeguards that are meant to protect the most vulnerable migrants and violates American asylum laws by returning them to life-threatening situations in their home countries.
Although the hotels might appear to be an improvement as a place for detention over sparse Border Patrol holdings cells, critics say that because the hotels are not part of the formal detention system, they are also not subject to policies meant to prevent abuse or those mandating that detainees be given access to phones and healthy food, as well as to medical and mental healthcare.
The hotel detention system was revealed last month, but documents seen by The New York Times have now detailed the extent to which major hotel chains are participating in the scheme, with at least 860 migrants detained at various hotels along the southern border.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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