Feminist Organizations are Fighting for Migrant Children at the Border

“If you look at the conditions of custody at the border, it’s really primarily small cells used for processing with the intention of very quickly turning [people] back because they had no legal basis for wanting to stay in the United States,” Michelle Brané, Senior Director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a global nonprofit that fights for the migrant and refugee women’s rights, explained. “As that demographic started to shift, what we started to see is more unaccompanied children arriving and more women arriving with children. Eventually, that dynamic and demographics sort of expanded to a lot of men coming with their children and full families. [The holding cells] are no longer appropriate settings for these children and families. They’re not built for families.”