'Close the Camps!': Protesters in S.F. Call for End to Detention of Migrant Children, Families

Chanting "Close the camps! Close the camps!" several hundred people protested in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday, calling for an end to the detention of migrant families and children.

The demonstration on Market Street was one of more than 180 nationwide organized by the advocacy groups MoveOn, Families Belong Together and United We Dream. Protesters mobilized after a group of independent monitors, who visited a Border Patrol station in Clint, Texas, reported in late June that children were filthy, sick with the flu and held in overcrowded rooms for weeks, without much time outdoors or proper adult supervision.

Apart from closing the government facilities, protesters were calling for families to be reunited. They also said no more funding should be spent on family detention and deportation.

"It's just so ridiculous that they are putting little kids in like, prisons, saying that their parents shouldn't have tried to make a better life for them," said Gillian Winer-Fashing, 13. "That is not right, in no universe could that ever be at all right."

The protest began in front of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office on Post Street. Many protesters said they were incensed with her and other local lawmakers who voted for a $4.6 billion emergency border funding bill that President Trump signed on Monday.

Most of those funds, $2.8 billion, are for the Department of Health and Human Services to shelter and care for minors apprehended at the border without a parent or legal guardian. But the bill also includes more than $1 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection -- which oversees Border Patrol -- to expand its capacity to detain and feed a surge of Central American families and children,  who now make up most of the arrests along the border.

The White House and top officials at those agencies say their facilities are overcrowded or "at capacity" and they need the extra funds to continue handling the increased flow of migrants in their custody.

The Department of Health and Human Services says it's now dramatically expanding its network of child shelters nationwide to avoid the kind of scandal that occurred in Clint.

"There are too many kids in Border Patrol stations right now and we're working to get them out of those stations and into HHS care," Mark Weber, HHS deputy assistant secretary for public affairs, told NPR.

CBP arrested nearly 144,300 migrants at the southern border in May — more than any other month in the last five years. While male adults from Mexico represented most of the apprehensions in the 1980s and 1990s, now most of those arrested are Central American families and children who say they are fleeing crushing violence, impunity and poverty in their home countries.

Several protesters say they want big changes from elected officials like Feinstein, including pushing for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to close.

"Abolish ICE and also the Border Patrol people. I don't think that militarized approach is appropriate in a humanitarian situation like this," said Rose Molloy, an attorney who came to the San Francisco protest on her lunch break. "We shouldn't give them more power, and more unfettered authority over people's lives."

The protests come one day after a congressional delegation including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited the Border Patrol station in Clint, near El Paso.

Protesters are calling for Feinstein, Sen. Kamala Harris and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to also visit border facilities holding children and families over their July 4 recess.

The offices of Feinstein and Harris did not respond to requests for comment on the protesters' demands. But on Twitter, Harris said: "Every American should be outraged over the inhumane treatment of detained immigrant children at our border. It doesn't make us safer and it's not who we are as a country. My colleagues and I are calling for investigations into those in charge of the facilities."

Feinstein commented, too:

Customs and Border Protection didn't respond to KQED requests for comment, and ICE declined to comment.