by Lauren Fluen at Daily Mail
Disturbing images show the cramped conditions inside a migrant ‘overflow’ tent in Texas where one lawmaker says 400 unaccompanied male minors are being held in ‘terrible conditions’ in a space meant for half as many.
The pictures, released by Congressman Henry Cuellar, show inside the U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary overflow facility in Donna over the weekend.
Democrat Cuellar said he did not take the images but said that they offer an insight into the ‘terrible conditions for the children’ at the border, where he has recently toured a different shelter for children.
Rep. Cuellar told Axios that as of Sunday 400 unaccompanied male minors were being kept in a tent meant to hold a maximum of 260 people.
He added: ‘We have to stop kids and families from making the dangerous trek across Mexico to come to the United States. We have to work with Mexico and Central American countries to have them apply for asylum in their countries.’
The Biden administration has banned media access to the facilities amid a growing humanitarian and political crisis at the US southern border.
Photojournalist John Moore recently criticized the administration for giving the media ‘zero access’ to the border operations, adding that there is ‘no modern precedent’ to cutting off the press from the border.
‘I respectfully ask US Customs and Border Protection to stop blocking media access to their border operations,’ Moore tweeted Friday. ‘I have photographed CBP under Bush, Obama and Trump but now – zero access is granted to media. These long lens images taken from the Mexican side.’
‘There’s no modern precedent for a full physical ban on media access to CBP border operations,’ Moore continued in another tweet. ‘To those who might say, cut them some slack — they are dealing with a situation, I’d say that showing the US response to the current immigrant surge is exactly the media’s role.
‘The vast majority of river crossings by asylum seekers happen on federal land in south Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. The federal [government] controls access to those areas. The Border Patrol has been removing journalists who enter, including recently myself, CBS, others.’
A total of 823 unaccompanied children were held at US-Mexico border facilities for more than 10 days – more than a fourfold increase over the last week, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document also leaked to Axios Sunday.
Children are not supposed to be held in border patrol custody for more than three days. As of Saturday 2,226 children had been held in custody for more than five days and 823 for more than 10 days.
The pictures show inside the U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary overflow facility in Donna…