First peek: Immigrant children flood detention center

NOGALES — They are fed and clothed, kept clean and cool, far better off than if they were walking through the desert in June temperatures.

They are undocumented. They entered the country illegally. And when they were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, they were shipped to Nogales from overwhelmed processing facilities in Texas.

But they are still children in cages, not gangsters, not delinquents. Just children, 900 of them, in a makeshift border-town processing center that is larger than a football field. They pass the day sitting on benches or lying side by side on tiny blue mattresses pressed up against each other on nearly every square inch of the floor in the fenced areas.

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The Nogales facility is a way station where the children are identified, examined for health problems by the U.S. Public Health Service, vaccinated and then moved to other facilities in Texas, Oklahoma and California until they are placed with relatives already in the country to await their day in Immigration Court.

On Wednesday morning, bowing to pressure from politicians, the CBP allowed journalists to tour this warehouse of humanity.

The tour dispelled rumors of ill treatment. The CBP agents in the building seem to be genuinely compassionate in their interactions with the children. The facility is clean and air-conditioned.

But in essence, it is a juvenile prison camp.

The children, mostly of high-school and junior-high-school age, are housed behind 18-foot-high chain-link fences topped with razor wire.

They are segregated by age and gender: There is one area for those 12 and under. There are areas for boys and girls ages 13 to 15, and still more for boys and girls ages 16 and 17.

Nylon tarps, tied to the fences, provide a modicum of privacy between the groups. They share the kind of portable toilets used at fairs and construction sites, placed inside the cages and vented with clothes-dryer hoses.

There is an occasional frisbee or stuffed animal. One pregnant teen in the older girls' area sat with her back against the fence, holding her belly. Muted televisions blink incongruously, hanging from overhead beams.

But most of the children lie motionless on side-by-side mattresses with looks of intense boredom on their faces. Inevitably, given the number of people, it smells of feet and sweat and straw, giving it the look and feel of the livestock areas at the State Fair.

Three times a week the children are allowed out of the fenced-in areas to go outside to a concrete playground with a small basketball hoop and benches under a tent where they can congregate.

Then, they take showers in trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, backed up to warehouse-like bays on the outside of the building. They drop their dirty clothes at the nearby laundry trailer and choose clean ones from boxes lined up on the ground.

Meals are served in another caged area. One CBP spokesperson said officials are trying to adapt meals to the children's tastes. For example, some children were not eating, and officials realized that, as Central Americans, they preferred corn flour to wheat flour and subsequently substituted corn tortillas for flour ones.

"One little fellow came and asked for a sanwich," the official said. (CBP officials asked that the children not be identified by name.)

After meals the children are passed through a metal detector.

Between the living and eating areas, the building looks like any other warehouse, stacked with pallets of water bottles, cans of beans and other provisions.

According to Customs and Border Protection, in the past eight months, agents have apprehended about 47,000 unaccompanied minors who crossed the border into the U.S. illegally from Mexico. Almost three-fourths of the children apprehended are from Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador.

The CBP estimates that apprehensions of minors this year may reach 90,000.

The journalists on Wednesday's tour were not allowed to talk to the children, and only one still and one video photographer were allowed to record images.

But one 16-year-old Guatemalan, who was caught by the CBP last month and placed with his brother in Phoenix pending his court hearings, told The Arizona Republic on Tuesday night why the youngsters come here: "From my point of view, because of the poverty and the delinquency," by which he meant gangs, in his native country.

How we are covering this issue

The Arizona Republic has three reporting teams covering the influx of Central American children arriving in unprecedented numbers in Texas.

Go to immigration.azcentral to see daily reports this week.

Today's story was written by senior reporter Michael Kiefer. Kiefer and staff photographer Nick Oza are following the children after they leave the detention centers in the U.S.

How to reach Kiefer

michael.kiefer @arizonarepublic.com

Phone: 602-444-8994

Twitter: @michaelbkiefer

How to reach Oza

nick.oza@arizonarepublic.com

Phone: 602-444-8282

Twitter: @nickoza1

Senior reporter Bob Ortega and senior staff photographer Michael Chow are in Central America to document the children who are leaving countries there..

How to reach Ortega

bob.ortega@arizonarepublic.com

Phone: 602-444-8926

Twitter: @bob_ortega

How to reach Chow

michael.chow @arizonarepublic.com

Phone: 602-444-8282

Twitter: @photochowder

Senior reporter Daniel González and photographer David Wallace are in Texas reporting from the Rio Grande Valley, where the children cross into the United States.

How to reach González

daniel.gonzalez @arizonarepublic.com

Phone: 602-444-8312

Twitter: @azdangonzalez

How to reach Wallace

david.wallace @arizonarepublic.com

Phone : 602-653-6228

Twitter : @DavidWallce