From PBS NewsHour.
Children being held at an ICE detention center in Dilley, Texas, are “despondent and depressed,” Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, said after a visit there this week.
Among the children he visited was Liam Ramos, a 5-year-old who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents while returning to his Minneapolis home from school with his father. Federal agents instructed Liam, wearing a Spider-Man backpack, to knock on the door to his home to see if other people were inside. Department of Homeland Security officials said they were targeting the father, not the child. They accused Liam’s father of abandoning his son and that others at the home “refused” to open the door.”
Ramos and his family entered the U.S. legally, @JoaquinCastroTX said.
The case has drawn national attention and Democrats are calling for the father and son to be released, as broader scrutiny has grown around the ICE facility in Dilley, where the pair is detained alongside other families. Detainees there say that the prison has inadequate medical care, food contaminated with worms and limited access to drinking water.
“We saw the whole gamut, the whole spectrum of kids, a 9-year-old who was picked up in Austin who spent New Year’s Eve getting processed into this jail,” he recalled. “One young girl who kept coming up to me, a little girl who was hugging my leg, asking us to help get her out of there.”
“These kids are very traumatized … and the parents themselves traumatized, grappling with how to help their kids, and they can’t,” he added.
Geoff Bennett spoke with Rep. Castro about his visit to the facility, why the Ramos’ were detained and why Castro thinks ICE should be disbanded.
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