7/24/20

By Josh Rubin

In McAllen, Texas, not many miles from Brownsville and the bridges that cross the river into Mexico, along a highway, there’s a Hampton Inn. Hampton Inn is a motel chain run by Hilton Hotels. I stayed at that Hampton Inn the day after I was released from Hidalgo County jail, after my arrest at the detention center at Ursula Road, the detention center made famous for the cages that held children who had been separated from their parents.

Now, that Hampton Inn has a floor that has been dedicated to the confinement of migrant children. They are guarded by what are called Transportation Specialists, who drive these children there, and keep them there. They are men who have shown themselves willing to use force against lawyers who have come to represent those children. We have seen the video.

These Transportation Specialists drive the vans that are parked in the same parking lot I parked in when I stayed there. They may specialize in driving, but they have other duties. They include keeping the boys and girls in their charge in sight at all times. Even so, there were moments yesterday when the children were able to press notes to the windows pleading for help. Perhaps the Transportation Specialists were too busy roughing up the lawyer who came to this floor and asked them to identify themselves.

They wouldn’t. But we have learned that the men who assaulted the lawyer, these Transportation Specialists, work for MVM, Inc., a Virginia company that has a contract with ICE. The children, we have learned, are being held, sometimes for several days without ever being allowed to go outside, until they are expelled from the country without any due process because of the risk of spreading COVID they represent.

A few miles away, across the river in Matamoros, Mexico, there is a fenced encampment of people on the muddy banks of the river that will swell tomorrow as nearly a foot of rain will fall from the skies, delivered by a tropical storm named Hanna.

Photo by Texas Civil Rights Project