Will Weissert and Elliot Spagat Associated Press Published 8:38 p.m. UTC Jun 23, 2018 McAllen, Texas – After touring a border processing facility on Saturday, Democratic lawmakers said they weren’t convinced the Trump administration had any real plan to reunite immigrant children separated from their parents by U.S. border authorities. The delegation of 25 members of Congress, which included U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Southfield, visited a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility in the U.S.-Mexico border city of McAllen, Texas. They described seeing children sleeping behind bars, on concrete floors and under emergency “mylar” heat-resistant blankets. Even when parents and children aren’t separated, they are often housed in adjacent cells that keep them apart, the lawmakers said. They added they hadn’t seen a clear federal system for reuniting those who were split up, since everyone – even infants – is assigned “A’’ or alien numbers, only to be given different identification numbers by other federal agencies. More: Trump seeks to expand immigrant family detention More: Immigrants await word on when they will be reunited Lawrence described the visit as an emotional roller coaster. “At border patrol, where children are first apprehended, we walked in and saw children laying on cement with aluminum blankets on top of them,” Lawrence said in a phone interview with The Detroit News. “Then the agent opened the door and all these children immediately stood up and didn’t say a word. There was over 600 in a single detention center in giant cages with no… [Read full story]
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