As Valley crisis continues officials point fingers

WESLACO — As reports continued to circulate of horrific conditions at Border Patrol facilities for the wave of immigrants caught illegally crossing the Rio Grande here, politicians across South Texas jockeyed to place blame Monday for what's being called a humanitarian crisis.

Gov. Rick Perry, speaking at a Department of Public Safety facility here, attacked the federal government for not providing resources to counter what he said are drug traffickers pouncing on the opportunity to move their goods across the river while the Border Patrol is preoccupied with the surge of immigrants.

Without mentioning President Barack Obama by name — Perry said it was a nonpartisan issue — the governor blamed federal policies for encouraging the wave of immigration. The children and families expose themselves to the elements and are preyed upon by Mexico's drug cartels, Perry said.

“You're going to see a trail of tears again, from Central America all the way to Texas,” he said.

State Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, said the influx was triggered, in part, because parents traveling with small children are emboldened when they are not detained but instead are released with notices to appear in immigration court.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, the Republican nominee for governor, also chimed in Monday after touring with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the emergency shelter at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, which was set up last month to deal with the tens of thousands of unaccompanied children crossing the border who cannot by law be detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“There are consequences that we are seeing because of the United States of America's failure and refusal to impose the rule of law, giving the impression to those far away that they can emigrate to the United States illegally without any consequence whatsoever,” Abbott said. “Because of that lack of rule of law, we're seeing our Border Patrol agents completely overburdened, and there are real consequences.”

In a letter to Perry, Davis asked that he declare a state of emergency in the Rio Grande Valley to free up state funds. She also asked him to declare a special session of the Legislature to address the crisis, a move the governor dismissed as being too time-consuming.

Speaking to reporters, Davis criticized state leaders for their decision to spend $30 million to send more state troopers to the Valley but not to provide more humanitarian aid.

“It should have been at the very least a dual response,” Davis said. “From talking with Border Patrol, it appears to me that they believe the reinforcements provided by DPS have been important ones. But we cannot only look at these issues of security, and I'm disappointed that's the only aspect of this that the governor sought to address.”

Davis and other officials asked the Obama administration to send more immigration judges to quickly process and deport people sneaking into the country, something the White House said last week that it plans to do.

Meanwhile, state officials released more information detailing conditions at the overcrowded Border Patrol facilities.

Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, said state health officials visited Border Patrol stations in Brownsville and McAllen last week and documented a range of concerns, including “severe” overcrowding and unsanitary conditions.

Among the concerns documented by the state:

Overcrowding: Children slept on cement floors, where they also ate and spent most of their day. There is roughly 51/2 square feet of living space per child; mass care standards recommend 20 square feet of personal space per person.

Potential for disease: There were toilets in cells where children ate and slept. “Handwashing facilities are inadequate,” state officials said. “Cells have no hand sanitation or running water or soap for hand hygiene.”

Lack of medical screening/quarantine areas: Only visual and oral medical screenings are conducted, and children with scabies, head lice and conjunctivitis “are not adequately separated from the general population,” the officials reported.

Williams noted that conditions at the Fort Brown station, where the bulk of unaccompanied children are housed, were far better than those at the McAllen station. In McAllen, she said, some children were housed in a large “non-air-conditioned overflow area” with adults for one to four days before they could enter the detention center.

“Children in this area sat, slept and ate on the floor with no cots in temperatures that reached 100 degrees,” state officials reported.

On Monday morning, a day of news conferences kicked off in McAllen with officials from the city and Hidalgo County saying they and local nonprofits are spending tens of thousands of dollars on services such as showers, food and clothing for the people who are released from Border Patrol custody.

But they balked at declaring an emergency and assured the public that there's neither a security nor a health crisis in the region. There have been five cases of chicken pox and one tuberculosis scare that turned out to be false, officials said.

“At this point, I don't see a need to declare it or request an emergency be declared,” County Judge Ramon Garcia said. “Public health, there's no significant issue. Public safety, there's no significant issue. I'm not going to say it's not going to happen. But at this point, it's not there yet.”