For many weeks now, especially since the CDC
order that effectively the Trump administration
used to end asylum, we’ve known that folks
who have been coming in through the border
to legally seek asylum, including unaccompanied
children, that instead of going through the
process that is spelled out by law, the Trump
administration has been just basically expelling
them — right? — without due process and
without any paper trail — in effect, basically
violating their due process.
So, for the last couple of weeks, we’ve
known that the number of children who have
been under the custody of the federal government
in the Office of Refugee Resettlement has
decreased over the course of the pandemic.
And so, in that time, in June, we filed a lawsuit 
on behalf of one of the children that was expelled.
And through her experience and working with
her, we came to find out that she was held in a hotel.
And that sort of set off for us a period of
investigation to try to find: Well, what did
she mean, right?
What do you mean that you’re in a hotel?
If you’re an unaccompanied child, that was
never supposed to have happened to you in
the first place.
And so, after a couple of weeks of investigation
and working with the Associated Press, which
broke the story last Tuesday, we were actually
able to uncover that the Hampton Inn hotel
in McAllen, Texas, was being used to house
and detain individuals, including unaccompanied
children, but also other asylum seekers, including
other family units, before they were expelled
from the country.
And it’s important to sort of note the distinction
between expulsion versus deportation, because
under deportation, which is a legal process,
there is a paper trail, right?
There’s a way for us to be able to track what 
is going on and try to do some legal intervention.
But under expulsion, under Title 42 of the
CDC order, what’s happening is that the
administration is basically just apprehending
people, holding them at black sites, either
like this Hampton Inn hotel or other hotels
across the country, or, quite frankly, maybe
moving now to other government prisons, before
they’re just summarily expelled, disappeared
basically from the country, and it becomes
almost impossible for groups like us, other
immigration attorneys or other human rights
advocates to try to even find individuals
to try to start some type of legal process
on their behalf.
Once sort of everything became viral on Thursday,
we quickly came to find out that the city
of McAllen, from what they’ve told us, that
they really didn’t have any knowledge of
what was going on at the Hampton Inn hotel.
But this is part of the wider picture — right?
— the things that we’re seeing in Portland,
which DHS agents, including Border Patrol
agents — where, you know, Portland is not
on the border — they are disappearing folks,
protesters, right?
The thing that’s happening, though, at the
border in the Rio Grande Valley, in El Paso
and in Arizona is that the heavy militarization
because of DHS over the last 20 years have
already — have been experienced by the community
here for decades — right?
— hypermilitarization, unaccountable federal agents 
that are basically shooting individuals with impunity.
There’s been numerous deaths of children
and other individuals in ICE and also Border
Patrol detention facilities here.
Border wall construction is ongoing and even
ramping up in the middle of the pandemic.
And there have been this type of hypermilitarization
on Brown communities here at the border for
decades and decades and decades.
And so, what we saw on Thursday was also an
outcrop of that.
And unfortunately, this is definitely something
that is being imposed under the national security
apparatus coming to Washington, D.C., with
no regard to the communities that have actually
been here and live here and have been undergoing
this militarization for decades.
The wider point, I think, here is that these
black sites that are being operated by the
DHS, whether they’re at a Hilton, Ritz-Carlton
or even one of the government prisons that
we already have a network of along the border
— the wider picture here is that there is
no oversight, no accountability to what’s
going on.
So, we could have families and other detained
folks here in our community still, and there
would almost be no way for us to find out,
unless we do a big investigation like we just
did to uncover one site.
So, if this is what it takes to uncover one
location and try to stop the illegal expulsion
of just 17 individuals — which, you know,
we know that there were more than 17 in there,
so we’re still actively looking for those
other individuals who were moved this weekend
under the cover of a hurricane.
So, if this is all happening with no oversight,
we can only just kind of imagine what other
black sites and what other secrecy is being
operated by DHS along the border.
