When Dr. Theresa Cheng, an emergency room physician at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, arrived at San Diego’s open-air waiting site for immigrants who have passed the United States-Mexico border, she was horrified. According to her statement in The New York Times, she saw children with “deep lacerations, broken bones, fevers, diarrhea, [and] even seizures” and a young boy with asthma struggling to breathe as the air filled with smoke from fires made to keep everyone warm. Dumpsters and porta-potties, filled to the rim with waste, held young children looking for places to hide. Having crossed the border for better lives, these children barely got by with minimal provisions.
Immigration across the United States-Mexico border has been one of America’s greatest concerns for years, with former President Donald Trump even using anti-immigrant rhetoric to support his campaign and stir debate on the issue of building a wall. A large amount of immigrants, mostly asylum seekers, pass the border every day and get themselves arrested by border police to become under U.S. custody. These migrants are then sent to immigration processing centers for the legal claims process, where they receive introductory provisions, medical screening, and a background check. But as the available quota at immigration centers fills, migrants, including their children, must wait at open-air sites.
Open-air sites are outdoor camps—usually made of flimsy curtain walls and cardboard mats—that hold migrant families and individuals waiting to be taken to proper facilities. They were gradually created in the past year as migrants entering America crowded near the border. These concentrated areas soon became camps and were organized enough to be recognized as sites by onlookers.
Unlike the immigration centers, however, open-air sites along the border lack the resources needed to help asylum seekers. “[T]he open-air sites have no shelters, meals or government-affiliated medical staff,” The New York Times reported. “Some sites have no restrooms, causing people to defecate outdoors in the open…With limited diapers, wipes, and creams from volunteers, babies have been kept in dirty diapers for extended periods of time.” Under these conditions, migrants may have to wait days before they are finally taken to immigrant processing facilities. This issue is especially concerning for children, who are most prone to developing health issues as a result of unsanitary conditions or malnutrition.
In California, where at least seven migrant camps are functioning, the controversy led to a court debate on whether the government has the responsibility to care for children at the camps. The Department of Justice insisted that since the children are not under the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the government does not need to provide shelter and food. According to The New York Times, the department stated that “Minors in these areas — close to the California-Mexico border — have not been arrested or apprehended by C.B.P. and are not in the legal custody of C.B.P.'”
Then, on April 4, a federal judge in California ruled that the government must prioritize the transportation of children at the camps to better facilities. “Children traveling alone must be turned over within 72 hours to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department,” The Washington Post explained. “That agency generally releases them to family in the United States while an immigration judge considers asylum.” Instead of being in camps for an unknown amount of time, the children would be sent to facilities to find families early on. This ruling marks a remarkable feat in the battle to alleviate conditions for children staying at these dire sites; the immigration process became much quicker, for the law now decrees it.
With this landmark decision, many advocates are hopeful that children can more safely complete the journey to America and avoid unnecessary deaths or illnesses. Although a single solution cannot easily resolve the immigration issue, it progresses through steps like these.
