A prematurely born infant and her 17-year-old mother spent seven days being almost entirely neglected in Border Patrol custody, according to lawyers who visited an immigrant processing station in McAllen, Texas, on Tuesday and Wednesday. The baby, barely a month old, was wrapped in a dirty towel, wore a soiled onesie and looked listless, said one of the lawyers, Hope Frye. The mother was in a wheelchair due to complications from her emergency C-section and had barely slept ― the pain made it too uncomfortable for her to lie down and she was afraid of dropping her baby, the immigration and human rights attorney said. “I looked at that baby and said ‘Who does this to babies?’” Frye said. “They were being sadistically ignored.”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection

The mother, according to Frye, said she had been taken to the hospital at least once to receive pain medication, but the baby had received no medical attention since being in Border Control custody. The child was born in Mexico just after her teenage mother left Guatemala for the U.S. when she was eight months pregnant. “The situation is so egregious and so inexplicable,” Frye said. “No person of good conscience could see this and think it’s alright to do any of what they’ve done.” Frye said one of her colleagues, an immigrant rights advocate, told her on Wednesday that the baby had not cried for five hours and had become “weak and listless.” The advocate, according to Frye, said that since the infant was wrapped only in a towel she was concerned her body temperature was dropping, which can be fatal. Children in government custody should not be kept in Border Patrol facilities longer than 72 hours, according to federal law and a court order. But The Washington Post recently found that children are regularly spending more than a week in stations and processing centers, and advocates told HuffPost that they’ve encountered numerous mothers with their infants not being transferred to longer-term facilities in a timely manner. Frye said that she and her team worked Tuesday and Wednesday to try to get the new mother and her child released from Border Patrol custody. After alerting government officials and medical officers, they also called 911 and the local Child Protective Services office, both of which said they didn’t have jurisdiction over the federal facility, according to Frye. Dr. Marsha Griffin, a pediatrician who works at the border and is co-chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Immigrant Health Special Interest Group, said she reached out to government medical officers on behalf of the lawyers and said they were responsive and concerned. Customs and Border Protection did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) learned of the case through the lawyers and tweeted on Thursday that officials at the Department of Homeland Security he contacted said the mother and child would be transferred to a long-term shelter immediately. The lawyers later on Thursday confirmed to HuffPost that the family had been transferred to a resettlement facility. The conditions at Border Patrols facilities have drastically deteriorated in recent months since an influx of immigrants, including a record number of families and unaccompanied children, have been crossing the border. Five children have died in Border Patrol custody since December.

Processing centers are no place for children. Dr. Marsha Griffin