Acting Border Chief John Sanders Resigns After Fallout from Horrid Conditions at Migrant Children Facility

Acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Mark Morgan will become acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commissioner on July 5. The announcement was made just hours after the resignation of John Sanders on Tuesday.

CBP apprehends and first detains migrant parents and children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Morgan previously led the U.S. Border Patrol under President Barack Obama. He was picked by President Donald Trump to lead ICE in May.

Sanders is stepping down for good reason: his agency’s cruel treatment of detained migrant children at a facility in Clint, Texas, including making children take care of toddlers, denying them enough food and water and not bathing them and changing their clothes at their detention centers.

Attorneys, who visited the Border Patrol station, said that some children had also been locked for three weeks inside the facility, where 15 children were sick with the flu and another 10 were in medical quarantine.

A lawyer, who had visited the station said that older children were having to care for younger children, some had been held for nearly a month and some children had not been allowed to contact family members, according to USA Today.

On June 24, the U.S. government had removed all but 30 migrant children from the facility. There had been about 255 children being held there altogether.

Six children have died since late last year after being detained by CBP.

“Children do not belong in detention and (President Donald Trump’s) failed policies are only harming children and promoting needless and cruel family separation. This must end, ” U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, tweeted Monday.

But, on June 25, the House passed a $4.5 billion emergency border aid bill that would require CBP to establish new health and safety standards for migrants in its custody and protocols for dealing with migrant surges within 30 days, according to The Washington Post.

The changes would also limit children’s stays at “influx” shelters used by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to no more than 90 days and require the department to report to Congress on their use.

HHS shelter contractors that do not provide adequate standards of living, food and personal items, such as toothbrushes, as well as medical care, schooling, leisure activities, and other basic services, will be barred.

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