New photos shows migrant children crowded into single playpen at US-Mexico border

At least 4,100 children and women in facility intended for 250

New photographs have shown thousands of migrant children packed into a vastly overcrowded “tent camp” on the US-Mexico border – after the Biden administration succumbed to pressure to allow the media visit it. 

The images from the facility at Donna, Texas, a few miles from the international border, show up to 4,100 children, and some families, squeezed into facility intended to cater to no more than 250.

Some of the most striking images show toddlers aged three to nine, in a single playpen, with some of the youngest of the children sleeping on its floor on mats.

The images have triggered fresh controversy about the conditions in the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facility, located 10 miles from the city of McAllen. 

And they will heap fresh pressure on President Joe Biden, whose decision to allow the most vulnerable asylum-seekers to wait in the US, has at least in part been linked to the thousands of new arrivals in recent weeks along the Rio Grande Valley.

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Previously, Donald Trump had forced the children and their families to wait in Mexico while their claims were processed, something experts said put them at great danger.

There is a massive backlog of cases, a shortage of judges to hear them, and applications can take years – something some Republicans have admitted was intended to deter migrants seeking to enter the country.

On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki again defended the administration’s approach, which Mr Biden had vowed would be more humane than that of his predecessor.

She also said Mr Trump had left behind an immigration system simply focused on deterring people from trying to come to the country, even as asylum-seekers.

She said the White House was “digging out of a broken system over the past four years”.

“Not just the inhumane policies but the fact that there were never efforts put in place to look for and seek shelters where these children could be safely and humanely housed,” she added.

The visit on Tuesday by two reporters from the Associated Press and a CBS News crew, was only the second time the media had been permitted to enter such a facility since Mr Biden was elected president. Last week, as controversy mounted, a single reporter was permitted to accompany a congressional delegation to a facility at Carrizo Springs, near San Antonio.

The AP said most of the youngsters being dealt with were unaccompanied children processed in tents before being taken to facilities run by the Department of Health and Human Services and then placed with a family member, relative or sponsor.

It said the children were being housed by the hundreds in eight “pods” formed by plastic dividers, each about 3,200 square feet (297 square metres) in size. Many of the pods had more than 500 children in them.

It said that more than 2,000 children have been held at the facility longer than the 72-hours, that is supposed to the maximum a child should be held by the CBP.

Republicans have leaped on the events, seeking to portray them as “a crisis”, even though migrant rights groups say numbers of arrivals have risen and fallen at different times in recent years.

Last week, Texas senator Ted Cruz led a group of 18 Republicans in a tour of the Rio Grande Valley, that included a briefing from CBP officials, a journey on the Rio Grande on a heavily armed patrol boat, and the facility at Donna. 

“What is occurring here on the border is heartbreaking, and it is a tragedy,” he said.

When asked by The Independent what Republicans would do to address the issue of immigration long-term, Lindsey Graham snapped that reporters should interview CBP agents, as they knew what was happening. 

He said Mr Trump had responded to a spike in migrant arrivals last summer by telling Mexico, the US was going to put tariffs on all its products unless it more forcibly enforced the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy. 

“What happened? It went down to a 45 year low, because nobody’s going to pay $20,000 to come to Mexico and wait for four years,” he said.

Additional reporting by Associated Press