[CPEO-MEF] "Biden Wants to Reopen a Child Detention Center on Top of Toxic Military Waste, " Homestead, FL

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Biden Wants to Reopen a Child Detention Center on Top of Toxic Military Waste
Joe Biden is looking to reopen the children’s detention center in Homestead, Florida, which is situated in an area so polluted it’s been designated unfit for residents.

By Ian Kumamoto
Vice
March 11, 2021


Maya, who worked closely with the children at the migrant detention center for youth in Homestead, Florida, witnessed how the overcrowded conditions made the children there sick: someone always seemed to have a fever, a cold, or the chicken pox. She recalls how sometimes, when kids went for a shower, the shampoo bottles would be filled with mites. Or how the children would line up single-file to use the bathroom and she had to refer to them not by their names, but by a series of numbers, in accordance with the shelter’s policy. 

Maya also remembers all the things she was told never to tell the children: That allegations had surfaced of child sex abuse inside the shelter. That activists outside were fighting for their release. That every so often, someone managed to escape. And that the detention center was surrounded by Superfund sites, a term used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for land it’s cleaning up because it contains improperly managed toxic waste.

“Supposedly, the whole terrain was contaminated,” said Maya, whose name has been changed to protect her from legal scrutiny. “We knew. We all knew. The kids were the only ones who didn’t know.”

…

For the entire article, see
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3an9mb/biden-homestead-migrant-children-detention-center-superfund

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org

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