“How Low Can Our Government Go When It Needs a Court Ruling to Provide Children with Essential Care?”
Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in favor of providing basic hygiene supplies to children in federal immigration detention facilities after the government unsuccessfully argued that they did not need to provide migrant children with the bare-minimal essentials: soap, toothbrushes, sleeping mats and proper food and water.
As Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) tweeted yesterday, “A court needed to force them to let children bathe. Let that sink in.”
“How low can our government go when it needs a court ruling to force them to provide children with essential care? It’s truly appalling that the government needed to be forced to provide basic human necessities to children in detention. This is a defining moment of the Trump administration’s cruelty. To go out of their way to prevent children from bathing, brushing their teeth and having a clean place to sleep and eat is not only barbaric, but stands in the face of American values and principles,” said Pili Tobar, Deputy Director of America’s Voice. “For President Trump it’s not enough to inflict trauma by ripping children from their parents and holding them in cages, now he wants to rob them of their dignity, and put them in harm’s way by forcing them to stay locked in squalid conditions — even after the death of several children in Customs and Border Protection custody. In the U.S., we value the lives of children, and we will continue fighting to ensure that they are safe from the horrors inflicted upon them by this administration.”
