Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
HOMESTEAD, Fla. (AP) — As a national furor unfolded over the harsh conditions immigrant children are being subjected to in the U.S., Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren climbed a step ladder and waved at teenagers being held behind a chain-link fence covered with a mesh screen.
"These children pose no threat to people here in the United States of America," the Massachusetts senator told reporters when she was back on solid ground, "and yet they are locked up here for weeks, for months, because our government is following a policy of inflicting maximum pain on families that flee here trying to build a better life."
Warren is one of nearly a dozen White House hopefuls who transformed the nation's largest child migrant detention center into a must-stop destination on the campaign trail. With presidential debates Wednesday and Thursday in nearby Miami, candidates were eager to visit Homestead to turn the facility into a symbol of the Trump administration's harsh treatment of young migrants.
That treatment could become a galvanizing issue for Americans following the drownings earlier this week of a Salvadoran man and his toddler daughter, captured by a journalist in a searing photograph.
By Thursday, three more presidential candidates visited the site, with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders each climbing the same step ladders as Warren to peer at the children over the wall.
With reporters and TV cameras swarming, O'Rourke shouted in Spanish that the children were loved, while his wife, Amy, held up a sign shaped like a heart.
Trump on Wednesday blamed Democrats for the deaths shown in the photo, saying their party refuses to fund his immigration priorities and change laws for entering the country. Democrats accuse the Republican president of preventing families from seeking asylum and of holding migrant children in filthy conditions, such as the ones found last week by a team of lawyers at a border facility in Clint, Texas.
O'Rourke said the Florida facility looked like "a military POW camp." Sanders said children fleeing their home countries "to try to save their lives and have a shot at human freedom and dignity" should be released to relatives in the U.S.
Warren, unveiling her plan to ban private detention providers, last week called out Caliburn International, the private company behind the Homestead site, for recently appointing former White House chief of staff John Kelly as a board member. The year before Trump was sworn in, Kelly had served on the boards of the private equity firm that created Caliburn. In 2017, he became the first official to say publicly that the Trump administration was considering separating children from their parents to deter families from journeying north. Warren and other lawmakers have urged investigations into the latest no-bid contract awarded to one of the company's subsidiaries for $341 million.
Sanders and O'Rourke also honed in on Caliburn's involvement.
"At their most vulnerable and desperate moment, instead of reuniting them with their families, we are incarcerating them in tents in a for-profit corporation's facility with no oversight, no transparency — no real way of knowing how those kids are doing, or how they will fare going forward," O'Rourke said.
The teens at the Homestead facility are mostly fleeing gang violence or poverty. Although many traveled to the U.S. without family, they have described the devastation of being taken from aunts, uncles or older siblings before ending up in custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, according to court documents. Last year, a now-defunct policy implemented by the Trump administration led to more than 2,700 children being separated from parents, causing mass outrage.
None of the candidates has been allowed into the Homestead facility, which holds about 2,500 children.
Health and Human Services spokeswoman Evelyn Stauffer said in an email that members of Congress are welcome to tour the facility, but there's a minimum two-week notice required, a policy she said had been in place since 2015.
Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar stopped by on Wednesday afternoon, and California Rep. Eric Swalwell visited on Monday. Six others, including South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, announced Friday visits.
Protesters have had a regular presence outside the facility. Drenched in sweat from the intense heat, protesters on Wednesday shouted "Homes Instead!"
Republicans accused the Democratic candidates of trying to score cheap political points with the pilgrimages to Homestead, saying they should be focused on crafting solutions to problems with the nation's immigration system.
Federal lawmakers and immigrant rights advocates have called for the detention center to be shut down, saying it is holding children for too long in "prison-like" conditions. A Clinton-era settlement generally bars the government from holding children longer than 20 days, but some children at Homestead said they had been there for months.
Caliburn said in a statement that it operates temporary shelters to protect "vulnerable, unaccompanied young people" and provide them with services including classes, recreation and medical care, "not private prisons or detention centers."
"Those who suggest otherwise are intentionally creating a false and deceptive description to mislead the public and score political points," the company said.
Immigrant advocates express concerns the facility is not licensed by the state. The Florida Department of Children and Families does not conduct regular inspections, saying it has no jurisdiction because the property stands on federal grounds. The federal government has waived child abuse and neglect checks on employees.
A motion filed last month in a federal court included dozens of testimonials from children who complain they cry because they miss their families and are allowed only limited phone calls. They are obligated to follow numerous strict rules, such as no touching or hugging friends, or risk prolonging their detention or facing deportation.
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
