El Paso, August 22 (RHC)--On the U.S. border with Mexico, Customs and Border Protection said it will not vaccinate migrant families ahead of the upcoming flu season. Doctors recently sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to investigate health conditions at migrant jails along the border after they say at least three children have died from the flu.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends annual flu shots for everyone over the age of six months.
This comes as multiple lawsuits challenging conditions for jailed migrants have or will soon be filed. A class-action lawsuit was filed in California Monday accusing the U.S. government of denying adequate food, medical care and other basic necessities to migrant prisoners in ICE facilities.
The suit says the dire conditions inside the migrant jails amount to torture, and highlights the mistreatment of people with disabilities. The Atlanta-based Southern Poverty Law Center, one of the groups that filed the suit, said imprisoned immigrants are “at risk of illness, discrimination on the basis of disability, and the arbitrary imposition of solitary confinement as a result of ICE’s reliance on mass incarceration and its indifference to the conditions in its prisons.”
Meanwhile, a joint investigation by the Associated Press and PBS’s “Frontline” reveals that dozens of families who were separated at the southern border are getting ready to sue the government over claims that young children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused while in federally funded foster care.