Yahoo News Baby at US border detention centre ‘wrapped in plastic after suffering diarrhoea’ when guards ‘refuse clean clothes’
A baby at a US border detention facility was allegedly wrapped in plastic by his mother after guards at the camp refuse to give him clean clothes following a bout of diarrhoea.
According to paediatrician Dolly Lucio Sevier, who has evaluated dozens of sick children at a facility in South Texas, the four-month-old baby was wrapped in bed pads usually used for incontinence patients in hospitals.
The boy had soiled his clothes and his 17-year-old mother had connected two nappies “like a disposable tunic” and wrapped him up, according to The Atlantic.
Ms Sevier claims that the baby was “dirty and sticky” and that fluff from the nappies “clung to his hands, his armpits, and the folds of his neck”.
The mother of the baby told Jody Goodwin, an attorney who visited the camp with Ms Sevier: “I carry my baby super close to me to keep his little body warm.”
The revelations come as a report from US government auditors found "serious overcrowding" in Border Patrol facilities which require "immediate attention”.
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The report released by the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Inspector General covered facilities in South Texas' Rio Grande Valley and included a photo of one man pressing a cardboard sign to a cell window with the word “help".
In one photo, women and children can be seen sleeping on the floor with only emergency blankets for cover. Several people are wearing surgical masks.
In another, the auditors say 88 men were being held in a cell with a capacity of 41.
DHS has blamed the surge of families crossing the border for straining its capacity. But reports of filthy conditions in some facilities have sparked outrage.
The shocking claims made in The Atlantic report set out the conditions that many migrant children and their families face every day.
Ms Sevier said that babies are only allowed to have a bath if they have been removed from their parents, while there is no soap or showering facilities for children.
She also said that the 38 children she asked about sanitation in one day all said they were not allowed to wash their hands of brush their teeth, adding that there was a “smell of sweat and soiled clothing”.
Ms Sevier noted that some two-thirds of the children she examined had symptoms of respiratory infection, while also finding evidence of sleep deprivation, dehydration, and malnutrition.
