By Alicia A. Caldwell and Andrew Duehren
LOS ANGELES—Conditions at Border Patrol stations in South Texas are so grim that migrant men detained in one facility pleaded for help from government inspectors visiting in June, according to an internal watchdog report released Tuesday.
Dozens of disheveled men crowded around a window, holding up notes telling passersby how long they had been there. Some pointed to their beards as evidence.
The conditions are so dire—with some detained migrants held in standing-room-only cells for days on end—that at least one senior Border Patrol official described the situation as a “ticking time bomb” during a June 10 visit from the Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.
The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D., Md.) on Tuesday invited the acting leaders of the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection, Kevin McAleenan and Mark Morgan, to testify on July 12 about conditions at the border.
The inspector general’s report came as Democrats and a senior border patrol official alike denounced reports of a private Facebook group of current and former U.S. Border Patrol agents who shared vulgar, violent posts, including fake images of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), who has decried conditions at the border, forced to engage in sex acts.
Agents in the Rio Grande Valley, the site visited last month by the inspector general’s office, cited “security incidents” involving men at the holding facilities, including migrants clogging the single toilet in the cinder block cells with Mylar blankets and socks to force their removal so the cells could be repaired and cleaned. In one incident, the agents said, men who had been moved refused to return to the cell and some migrants have tried to escape, the report said.
The visit was cut short “because our presence was agitating an already difficult situation,” the report said.
The report released Tuesday by the Homeland Security Inspector General’s office is the latest of its kind to detail overcrowded and unsanitary holding cells as lawmakers, immigration advocates and a federal judge have weighed in on conditions at the U.S. border with Mexico.
It could further press the Trump administration and Congress, which last week approved a $4.6 billion package of humanitarian aid for migrants at the border, including funds for the care of unaccompanied children, new teams of immigration judges, and funds for Customs and Border Protection to process the influx of migrants.
Under federal law, unaccompanied children must be transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement within 72 hours. Customs and Border Protection’s policies require that other migrants generally be transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement within 72 hours.
Last week a federal judge in California ordered the government to quickly improve conditions for children held by immigration authorities at the border.
Several children and adults have died in government custody after crossing the border illegally in the past year. Most recently, Customs and Border Protection said Saturday that a 43-year-old Salvadoran man died in Border Patrol custody about a week after crossing the border illegally with his daughter near McAllen, Texas.
Democratic lawmakers toured border facilities in El Paso on Monday and said they were shocked by the conditions. Several said a woman said border agents told her she should drink water from a toilet. Video footage posted by Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, the chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, shows women gathered on a concrete floor with sleeping bags.
In a statement about the congressional visits on Monday, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection said that migrants receive three meals a day and are assured access to clean drinking water. Agency officials described the challenges created by the large number of migrants to the members of Congress, according to the statement.
“CBP takes allegations of mistreatment of individuals in our facilities seriously, and reports all allegations to both the DHS Office of the Inspector General and the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility. Any employee found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable,” the spokesperson said.
After reports surfaced of the Facebook group of current and former Border Patrol agents, Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost condemned the comments as “highly inappropriate and offensive” in a letter to employees Monday night. She said the agency had launched an investigation.
Democratic lawmakers have also condemned the report, and Mr. Cummings, the House Oversight Committee chairman, has said he would seek to question Messrs. McAleenan and Morgan about the posts.
Federal immigration authorities have said for months that the situation at the border has reached a breaking point as a record number of immigrant families, most fleeing violence, poverty and corruption in Central America, have crossed the border illegally in the last 10 months. Since the start of the federal fiscal year in October, more than 332,000 migrants traveling as families have been arrested at the border, more than in any other full year. More than 56,000 unaccompanied children have also crossed the border illegally since October.
“We have been transparent for months in the current capacity issues,” Brian Hastings, chief of law-enforcement operations at the U.S. Border Patrol, said on Fox News on Monday. “Our facilities were not built for long-term detention.”
One photo taken by the inspectors shows dozens of unkempt men crowded around a cell window trying to get the inspectors’ attention. The cell, the report said, had the capacity for 41 but was housing 88 men.
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