Thompson visits border detention center, reports on conditions
One of Lake County’s two members of the House of Representatives paid a visit to a border detention center this weekend, touring the facility, documenting conditions and offering recommendations to improve the situation.
Congressman Mike Thompson (CA-5) was among a delegation of about 20 Democrats who went to the facility in Brownsville, Texas, on Saturday.
“It’s a real mess down there,” Thompson, who was back in Washington, DC, on Monday, told Lake County News. “There’s nobody that you or I know who would be anywhere at all interested in spending a minute, let alone a day, in those areas.”
For Thompson, the weekend trip to the center wasn’t the first time he’s visited such a facility. “I’ve been to border detention centers before, as far back as when I was in the State Senate.”
He’s previously traveled to the detention center in Pharr, Texas, a large port of entry in the Rio Grande Valley. He’s also visited the port of entry in Brownsville, but Saturday was the first time he’d been to the detention facility there.
On Friday, Vice President Mike Pence made a visit to the McAllen, Texas, detention facility.
On Friday night, when Thompson and his colleagues flew in, Border Patrol had apprehended 2,000 people, he said.
While Thompson was at the Brownsville facility on Saturday, he said authorities detected someone trying to smuggle in drugs.
He said the facility is very large and is over capacity. The other detention facilities he’s seen have never been that full.
Conditions are very poor, said Thompson, describing overcrowding, with 25 to 30 people in a closed cell with an exposed toilet, and not all of them able to lie down.
“It’s safe to say, we treat our criminals on death row better than some of these folks are being treated in these facilities,” he said.
Thompson said he believes the United States is seeing a larger number of asylum seekers – certainly a larger number of detainees.
He said the delegation visited with representatives of Catholic Charities and about 50 individuals who had come into the detention center, and not one was from Mexico – all were from Central America. “That’s a significant change.”
The main reason so many people are coming is because of conditions in their home countries, he said.
For people to take the risks to come to this country with their small children – or to send their children alone – in order to seek asylum shows how fearful they are for their lives, he said.
Most of the asylum seekers he and the delegation saw this weekend are from the “Northern Triangle” area of Central America – El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
“Conditions there are just terrible,” he said.
There are, however, solutions, according to Thompson.
“Any way we can help these countries with their internal problems that they’re experiencing, we’re going to benefit here,” he said.
He said he’s on a NAFTA negotiating team, and noted that the changes they’re seeing in Mexico – such as increased worker rights – are enhancing people’s opportunities there and minimizing the likelihood that they will come to the United States.
On Monday night, with bipartisan support, the House of Representatives passed legislation to deal with conditions in the Northern Triangle.
The bill, H.R. 2615: United States-Northern Triangle Enhanced Engagement Act, was introduced in May by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-New York).
It authorizes $577 million for an overall Central American strategy that includes minimizing corruption, enhancing enhance democracy, economic development and addressing the refugee crisis.
That vote on Monday followed an announcement earlier in the day by the Trump Administration about plans to end asylum protections for migrants – including children – who have passed through another country before reaching the southern border and attempting to enter the United States. The new rule is expected to be published in the Federal Register on Tuesday.
Right before the July 4 holiday, Congress passed and the president signed legislation that Thompson said is meant to deal with the immediate problem on the border.
That bill appropriated $4.6 billion in emergency funding, and will also cover more immigration judges – which Thompson said are badly needed – and offers funding for nongovernment organizations, or NGOs, to assist.
“It’s not something the government can do by itself. The NGOs are a very critical part of this,” he said.
“That money was critically needed to help the situation down there,” he said. “That’s step one.”
Another recent development in the effort to improve the process is that DNA swabs are now being used to help confirm the family connections between children and adults who were traveling together and have come into the facilities, Thompson said.
Now, Thompson said he has other ideas about what can be done.
“I’m convinced that after seeing it firsthand, we really need to figure out how to get the appropriate agency running things on the border,” he said.
Thompson said he doesn’t think Border Patrol should be running the health and human services portions of the detention centers. While he said the agency does a great job of patrolling the border, its specialty is law enforcement.
He said he wants to figure out how to put the right people in charge.
“We saw people in these cells who hadn’t had a shower in 20 days,” he said, explaining that Border Patrol staff said they had ordered portable showers but they aren’t expected to come for up to three weeks.
Thompson said he couldn’t help but think back to the wildland fires in Lake County, in particular those in 2015, such as the Valley fire, which displaced thousands of local residents, some of them seeking refuge at the Napa County Fairgrounds in Calistoga.
As soon as the Napa County Board of Supervisors saw that people weren’t going to go home in a few days, they saw that the fairgrounds shower facilities weren’t sufficient and had portable showers on site and ready for use within 48 hours.
As for what’s next to address the nation’s border and immigration issues, Thompson said, “We need to continue our efforts that we’ve begun.”
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.