Page 2 - Yuma Facility News Today

Border station repeatedly described poor conditions that are not pure byproducts of overcrowded. they reported being denied a phone call, not allowed a shower, sleeping outside or only with a mylar blanket or feeling hungry before their dinner time. joining us now is julia ainsley. shes one of the reporters who broke the story. julia, this is extraordinary reporting. as i read it, its based on government reports of whats going on in this facility. >> and thats key, lawrence, because its not that...

Supervising border patrol agent just denied all the accounts that we had heard. we know that when the flores immigration attorneys went to investigate, 60 children reported pretty much the same ho horrific conditions and now we have nearly 30 accounts of what is taking place at the yuma facility. this head agent denied everything. but you know what? i believe the children. and we should all believe the children. and we have to change these conditions. >> julia ainsley, quickly, is there any way ...

In julias reporting, but thats coming from a government report. its a government report that the congress has not seen. is there a way for the congress to get every possible report of any accusation of sexual abuse in these facilities? >> we need to get those reports and we can get those reports. we need to make sure that this sexual assault is investigated, but even more importantly, we need to make sure that there is fundamental change in whats going on. now, when we went to clint, i was just ...

About terrible conditions because of overcrowding in el paso, texas, like that clint, texas border facility weve been talking about for weeks and also in rio grande valley. this widens it to arizona, which shows its not just happening in texas, there is something systemic in border protection where these agents are not being held accountable and its more than just an overcrowding problem. overcrowding doesnt cause sexual assault. overcrowding doesnt cause agents to come in and retaliate against ...

But, yes, reporting that jacob and i have done previously did show that border agents have been concerned about this in the past. they were even in el paso arming themselves because they were worried about riots because they saw how these people were being treated. some of them were going into early retirement because they just couldnt take the treatment -- they couldnt take their jobs and the way these immigrants were being treated in their custody. they felt overwhelmed. so i dont want to say ...

Acting secretary kevin mcaleenan is that they simply need more space. in yuma, they did open a soft-sided facility in the end of june to move more children there just outside the border station where all these incidents took place. y, that alleviates overcrowding. one boy described he had to wait for someone to stand up before he could find a place to lie down and go to sleep. it alleviates that but it doesnt alleviate the misconduct weve seen and it doesnt hold accountability for a lot of these...

Are still more questions than answer, unfortunately. >> julia, this comes after a big "new york times" and "el paso times" combined team reporting in sundays "new york times" about what they find going on in the facility, the border patrol station at clint, texas. and one of the things that was included in that report were unnamed border patrol agents talking about how they were reporting this kind of thing up the ladder, up the chain of the command and nothing was happening, and its actually --...