Migrant detentions under the Trump administration
[9] In January 2017, Trump declared that 11 million immigrants in the United States would be targeted for detentions and deportation, including legal migrants who had previously committed a crime but not been arrested.
NBC News reported that from October 2017 to March 2018, the Trump administration only apprehended 41 known or suspected terrorists at the southern border, of which 35 were American citizens or lawful permanent residents.
Questioned on Sanders' false claims, Vice President Mike Pence said that "3,000 special interest individuals, people with suspicious backgrounds that might suggest terrorist connections were apprehended at our southern border".
[17] Also that month, the United States House of Representatives passed 305–102 the same version of the bill as the Senate, despite objections from Democrats wanting more protections for migrant children and more means to ensure accountability for the funds.
[19] Robert Farley, Eugene Kiely and Lori Robertson of Factcheck.org responded to an April 2018 claim by President Trump that there were "ridiculous liberal (Democrat) laws like Catch & Release".
George W. Bush's administration had in 2005 implemented Operation Streamline in parts of Texas, which would imprison and prosecute all illegal immigrants entering the country, with an eye for quick deportations.
Furthermore, the Trump administration has taken extra steps in attempting to remove processes for legal asylum claims via changing procedures of the Executive Office of Immigration Review.
[31] This decision was criticsed by U.S. Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard who said in a statement that: "Once again, DHS has ignored the negotiated agreement with Congress by vastly exceeding the amount appropriated for immigration enforcement and removal operations".
[36] In June 2019, Trump administration official Sarah Fabian argued (in an appeal to a July 2017 verdict) that the Flores agreement mandating "safe and sanitary" conditions for detained migrant children was "vague" and it was not compulsory for the government to provide toothbrushes, soap or adequate bedding to them.
[33] David Rubenstein and Pratheepan Gulasekam, writing for the Stanford Law Review Online in March 2019, depict the Trump administration as dramatically increasing privatized immigration detention "beyond its already inflated level".
[41][43] It reported that CBP "in many instances" was violating federal guidelines by detaining migrant children for over 72 hours before passing them to the Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The Office of Inspector General reported that this figure could be lower than the actual number because CBP used days of entry and exit for its time calculations, not specific hours.
[41][42][43] Regarding the conditions that unaccompanied migrant children had been detained, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General released another report in September 2018 detailing that during their spot-checks from June 26 to 28, 2018, the facilities visited by them were in compliance with federal standards for food, water and hygiene, with "the exception of inconsistent cleanliness of the hold rooms".
[47][48] In May 2019, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General released a report finding "dangerous overcrowding" at the El Paso Del Norte Processing center, where up to 900 migrants had been detained.
"[63][64][65] Also that month, Dolly Lucio Sevier, a board-certified doctor, visited the largest CBP detention center in the United States, the Ursula facility in McAllen, Texas which held migrant minors.
[64][66] On July 1, 2019, several Democratic congressmen visited migrant detention centers in Texas, in a tour organized by Border Patrol agents at 48 hours' notice, and gave comments afterwards.
Representative Marc Veasey said Border Patrol "went out of their way to show us facilities that were mostly empty", but the migrant detainees inside "described being deprived of daily showers and certain other rights".
Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Judy Chu and Joaquin Castro alleged that Border Patrol had told detained migrant women to drink out of a toilet for water.
[86] On July 14, 2019, Trump wrote that a McAllen, Texas facility visited by Vice President Mike Pence had "adult single men areas were clean but crowded – also loaded up with a big percentage of criminals".
Journalist Josh Dawsey of The Washington Post, who had visited the facility at the same time as Pence, responded to Trump that the detained men "hadn't showered in many days" and that the "stench was horrific".
[100] The United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, was in July 2019 "deeply shocked" at the conditions that the migrant children were reported to have been subjected to, with concerns about overcrowding, food, sleep, hygiene and healthcare.
[101] On 9 November 2020, the United States faced a review at the UN’s Human Rights Council session of 3.5 hours, citing the unexplained detentions of migrant children and the killings of unarmed Black people, during the Trump administration’s tenure, among other main issues.
[102] Mary Grace Antonym, writing for the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, interviewed former volunteers at migrant family detention centers and analysed news reports from July 2017 to August 2017.
[104] Han Seunghan and Choi Hyunkyung wrote in 2018 for a Research Association for Interdisciplinary Studies conference that detentions and family separations are "traumatizing events" for child and young adult migrants, which may cause them to have posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
[106] David Hernández, writing for NACLA Report on the Americas, wrote in May 2019 that "migrant detention is a punitive incarceration system rife with lawful forms of corruption."
Johnson and Cuison-Villazor argue that the Trump administration had alternatives to mandatory detentions, with the possibility of "catch and release" for non-flight risks and non-dangerous migrants, or even ankle bracelets for tracking.
[6] Emily Ryo, in 2019's Annual Review of Law and Social Science, credited the "media storm" over 2018's Trump administration family separation policy resulted in "unprecedented public awareness about immigration detention" in the United States.
To explain this comparison, Beorn stated that the Camp de Rivesaltes was "a temporary, insufficiently conceived facility designed to prevent foreigners from entering the country", and "officials have no real plan" with how to handle the migrants, just like the American detention centers.
A different view was proposed by history professor Jay Geller of the Case Western Reserve University, who instead labelled the migrant detention centers as internment camps.
[112] Niraj Shah, the CEO of Wayfair, generated additional controversy after he rejected the demands and donated to the Red Cross, which does not provide support to migrants detained at the border.
