250 migrant children in Texas moved from 'horrific cells' after outcry

Some 250 migrant children have been moved from an overcrowded border station in the US state of Texas where they had been "locked up in horrific cells" with an open toilet in the middle of the room, according to a media report. Many parents crossing the US border, most of them from Central America, were separated from their children in 2018. The border patrol in Texas this week reported the deaths of seven migrants who had apparently attempted to circumvent the immigration system - including two babies and a toddler.

Lawyers given access by a judge said the children were "severely neglected", the BBC reported on Tuesday. Quoting one of the lawyers, the BBC said that children were "locked up in horrific cells where there's an open toilet in the middle of the room" where they ate and slept.

"There was nobody taking care of these children... they were not being bathed on a regular basis," Prof Warren Binford of Willamette University in Oregon said after visiting the Clint facility in Texas. Several hundred of the children had been kept in a warehouse that was recently erected on the facility grounds.

"The cells are overcrowded... there's a lice infestation there, there is an influenza outbreak. Children are being locked up in isolation with no adult supervision, who are very, very ill and they're just lying on the ground on mats," Binford said. Elora Mukherjee, another lawyer who visited the facility, told CBS News: "They were wearing the same dirty clothing they crossed the border with."

"It is degrading and inhumane and shouldn't be happening in America." In a statement, the border authority acknowledged that the Clint facility was not suited to the task.

The agency said it had moved children to more suitable facilities as soon as space was available. On Monday, Democratic Representative Veronica Escobar, who had been deeply critical of the reported conditions, said she had been told that only 30 children remained in the Clint facility.

The separation of migrant children from their parents began in 2018 under a new "zero tolerance" policy from President Donald Trump's administration. It saw nearly 3,000 children separated before it was suspended. Under the policy, announced in May 2018, those who cross the border illegally were to be prosecuted - which required their children to be taken into care.