‘Detained migrants were told to drink toilet water’

CLINT: Women held in rooms without running water, sleeping bags set up on concrete and children left apart from their families: That was what Democratic lawmakers said they heard about on Monday as they toured two Texas border facilities. Their emotional, and graphic, descriptions came on a day when ProPublica reported the existence of a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents. Posts on the group’s page included jokes about migrants’ deaths, obscene GIFs and doctored images of Hispanic lawmakers, the report said. Some of the most offensive posts were directed at Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Monday’s visit to the border by more than a dozen members of Congress — including Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas — was a specific focus of some of the abuse on Facebook, ProPublica reported. One post used vulgar language to encourage agents to “hurl a ‘burrito’ ” at the two women.
Ocasio-Cortez fired back at the group on Monday night in a series of tweets describing the visit. “These officers felt brazen in there,” she said, pointing out that members of the congressional delegation were asked to surrender their phones before the visit. “While mgmt was telling us it was a ‘secure facility’ where *members of Congress* had to check their phones, we caught officers trying to sneak photos, laughing.” She added, referring to the Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection: “CBP’s ‘good’ behavior was toxic. Imagine how they treat the women trapped inside.”
The head of the Border Patrol, Carla Provost, said the posts on Facebook were “completely inappropriate,” adding that “any employees found to have violated our standards of conduct will be held accountable.” On Monday night, Customs and Border Protection said it was opening an investigation into the Facebook group. The ProPublica report further escalated the tense atmosphere the group of Democratic lawmakers found on their scheduled tour of facilities in Clint and El Paso. “It feels like a jail,” said Rep. Joseph P Kennedy III of Massachusetts, “and they’re treating them like they’re in jail.” “This entire system is broken,” he said. “They deserve better than this, and our country deserves better than this.”
Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet that Customs and Border Protection “did a lot of ‘cleaning up’ before we arrived.” She said women told her they had gone 15 days without a shower and were allowed to start bathing only four days ago, after the congressional visit was announced. Some women, she said, told her they were forced to drink out of the toilet when the faucet in their cell broke. A Customs and Border Protection official declined to comment on the accusation.