VI. Migrants Suffer Inhumane Treatment

1."Zero-tolerance" policy caused family separation

The US immigration authorities had separated more than 5,400 children from their parents at the Mexico border since July 2017.

As of July 2019, nearly 1,000 migrant children had been taken from their parents at the US-Mexico border since the US government curtailed the practice in 2018. Approximately 20 percent of the new separations affected children under 5 years old.

2. Migrant children were in the ordeal

As of September 2019, at least 2,838 unaccompanied migrant children lived in 35 shelters across Texas.

Between 2016 and 2019, inspectors discovered more than 552 health and safety violations at the facilities.

3. Migrants suffer cruel abuses

The border processing center in El Paso held up to 900 migrants at a facility designed for 125 in June 2019. Some of the detainees had been held in standing-room-only conditions for days or weeks.

The Time magazine reported on its website on July 10, 2019 that 24 immigrants had died in US custody since 2018.

4. The culprit of the worsening immigration problems in the Americas

The Guardian reported on its website on Dec. 19, 2018 that “the destabilization in the 1980s -- which was very much part of the US cold war effort -- was incredibly important in creating the kind of political and economic conditions that exist in those countries today. The families in the migrant caravans trudging toward the U.S. border are trying to escape a hell that the US has helped to create.”

An article carried by commondreams.com on Aug. 15, 2019 said that factors driving Central Americans from their homes were political corruption and repression, the power of the drug cartels and climate change -- all factors that, in significant ways, could be attributed to the United States’ actions in Latin America for decades.