Drawings from migrant kids who were detained at border show them inside cages

Migrant children who were recently detained in Customs and Border Protection facilities have drawn pictures of themselves in cages since being released from custody, Dr. Sara Goza, the incoming head of American Academy of Pediatrics, told CBS News.

Goza, the president-elect of the association of pediatricians, told the news agency in an interview released Wednesday that she received the drawings from a social worker last week, during which time she also visited two CBP facilities.

{mosads}During her tour of the facilities, Goza said she saw a number of children who had “no expression on their faces, there was no laughing, there was no joking, no talking.”

“I describe them almost like dog cages with people in each of them,” she told the news agency. “And the silence was just hard to watch, hard to see.”

“When they opened the door, the first thing that … hit us was a smell. It was the smell of sweat, urine and feces,” she said. “And I heard crinkling to my left and I looked over there and it was a sea of silver … there were young children, boys in there. Unaccompanied boys in there.” 

Her remarks arrive on the heels of a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General that found “dangerous overcrowding” and “prolonged detention of children and adults” at border facilities in the Rio Grande Valley.

“We are concerned that overcrowding and prolonged detention represent an immediate risk to the health and safety of DHS agents and officers, and to those detained,” the inspectors said in their report.

A senior facility manager who was interviewed referred to the situation as “a ticking time bomb” given the conditions.