Trump Admin Tells Court That Migrant Children Don’t Need Toothbrushes Or Soap

The Trump administration argued in court this week that detained migrant children don’t actually need things like soap and toothbrushes in order to be “sanitary.” The administration is hoping that they can cut back on essentials for the children they’ve locked up in order to save a few dollars, but there are better ways to save money, such as releasing these children! Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Earlier this week, a group of lawyers from the Trump administration headed out to California and argued in front of a panel of judges from the ninth circuit that detained children coming across the southern border do not actually need things like toothbrushes and soap. These lawyers appeared before judges and argued that even though they're required by law to give these children safe and sanitary conditions, they do not need soap or toothbrushes. Now, that's the part of this story that's been grabbing headlines, but the issue that the judges mostly wanted to focus on with something that's been a little bit overlooked or slightly buried in some of the news stories about it, and that is the fact that in addition to not giving them soap and toothbrushes and things like that, the administration is also making them sleep on cold concrete floors. They're essentially treating these children like they were prisoners of war, being held in, Gitmo, sleeping on cold concrete floors with either no blankets or foil blankets, leaving lights on all night so that it's nearly impossible for these kids to actually get a full night's rest.

Subjecting them to these horrid frigid temperatures, scorching heat temperatures, not doing anything about it. They're not able to bathe properly. They can't even brush their teeth. They're crowded into cells with a dozen other people, and that is an absolute violation of US law. But not to Donald Trump's lawyers know. They think that's how children are supposed to be treated, which really makes me wonder what's going on at their own homes. I think social services might need to look into that if that is what these lawyers consider safe and sanitary conditions. Want to read a couple of quotes here from the judges while the Trump lawyers were trying to argue that, no, we don't need to take care of these kids. Uh, you had one judge us circuit judge Marsha Berzon who said, you're really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn't a question of safe and sanitary conditions.

That he had circuit judge William Fletcher who went even further. He said, are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described? Cold all night long lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete, and you've got an aluminum foil blanket. I find that inconceivable that the government would say that this is safe and sanitary. The agreement the judge Fletcher was referring to there was the Flores agreement, uh, which the United States finalized in 1997, which basically says, yes, you have to take care of these people. You have to provide them the basic necessities.

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