Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Photos Offer Glimpse Inside Arizona Border Detention Centers

By Fernanda Santos, New York Times
August 18, 2016

PHOENIX — In June 2015, legal and civil rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit in Federal District Court in Tucson accusing the Border Patrol of holding migrants in dirty and crowded cells at stations in southeastern Arizona, after they were caught illegally entering the United States.

Late Wednesday, still images from surveillance video at the stations, offering a glimpse inside the cells, were publicly released. The videos were part of the evidence filed with the court during the discovery process and unsealed by Judge David C. Bury last week.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of migrants by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, the American Immigration Council, the National Immigration Law Center and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Some photographs show migrants lying shoulder to shoulder on bare concrete floors while neighboring cells are empty, sleeping pads stacked against walls. In one image, a man drinks from a gallon jug, apparently the only source of water for all the detainees in his cell. In another, men sleep against a toilet stall.[...]

Read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/us/photos-show-conditions-in-arizona-border-detention-centers.html

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