U.S. border authorities hold migrant families in a pen under an El Paso bridge

By Kate Linthicum
Mar 29, 2019 | 3:25 PM
| El Paso

Darkness had fallen, but few in this cramped outdoor detention camp would sleep.

Most of the migrants huddled in the cold desert air had nothing but thin blankets of insulated plastic to protect them from the wind. Rows of families, including small children and babies, lay directly on the dirt floor. Some had been living like this, exposed to the elements under an El Paso bridge, for four days, held there by U.S. border authorities.

The hastily erected holding pen, U.S. officials say, is an extreme but necessary response to a recent increase in Central American families crossing illegally into the country to ask for asylum. A Customs and Border Protection spokesman on Friday called the pen a temporary “transitional shelter” and said it was established last month.

Migrant advocates call it the latest in a string of inhumane practices targeting asylum seekers. They say that exposing families and young children to unsanitary conditions and chilly desert nights puts them in danger.

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El Paso Migrant Holding Pen ‘Looks Like a Concentration Camp’ Says Women’s March Spokesperson

By Chantal Da Silva On 3/29/19 at 10:05 AM EDT

As immigration advocates sound the alarm over "inhumane" conditions for asylum seekers who have been forced to wait under an overpass outside a Border Patrol station in El Paso, Texas, some activists have started to draw comparisons between the holding site and "concentration camps."

Commenting on photos showing hundreds of predominantly Central American asylum seekers, including many families, being forced to wait under an overpass in El Paso for their asylum claims to be processed, Women's March director of communications and digital outreach Sophie Ellman-Golan said on Twitter that the site "looks like a concentration camp."

Link to tweet

The Women's March spokesperson was not the only one to make the grim comparison, with writer Lauren Hough, who is based in Texas, sharing images of the holding site with the caption: "This is a f***ing concentration camp. We are running concentration camps."

Link to tweet

The images of hundreds of women, men and small children forced to wait in a crowded area behind fencing barbed with concertina wire have sparked fresh outrage over the Trump administration's handling of the situation at the border, where thousands of families have sought asylum in the U.S.

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