Back in June, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced that two military bases had been chosen to house migrants who enter the United States without the required paperwork. The Pentagon said then that it would house up to 20,000 children in tents at military bases. At the time, the Trump regime’s policy of separating undocumented children from their parents had been reversed in favor or family detention.
But at least some of the 2,000 or so children who had been separated from their parents by then are almost certain to become permanently orphaned. That’s in part because the children are still here but their parents have been deported and the government is making no serious effort to track them down, according to advocates for migrants.
One of the concerns raised after the announcement on using bases as migrant lock-ups was whether detained adults and children would wind up drinking contaminated water, in particular, water containing poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances, a.k.a. PFLAS. These are used at military bases because they are effective at dousing fires. A study meant to be released in January by the Agency For Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded that people should only be exposed to extremely low levels of PFLAS. For six months, the White House kept the report under wraps but, under bipartisan pressure, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services finally got the 852-page study released in late June.
However, that contaminant is only one toxic chemical at the two Texas military bases—Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base. Therefore, on behalf of health, labor, and environmental organizations including Alianza Nacional de Campesinas (Alianza), GreenLatinos, the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, the National Hispanic Medical Association, the Hispanic Federation, and the Southwest Environmental Center, the environmental advocates at Earthjustice filed a Freedom of Information Act request Wednesday to find out just how serious all the contamination is at 10 sites on the those bases:
Fort Bliss, in particular, has Superfund sites, which are polluted locations requiring a long-term response to clean up hazardous material contamination. At Goodfellow Air Force Base, the area where tents will be constructed is directly over a former firing range and adjacent to a closed but uncapped landfill. Exposure to toxic chemicals from these sites can cause cancer, neurological damage, developmental harm, and many other diseases. The bases could also have remnants of polyfluorinated compounds called PFAS stemming from the foams used to douse fires during training.
“Detaining migrant families with children in hastily constructed tents on military bases is ill-conceived and dangerous,” said Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans. “Families could be exposed to radiation, toxic chemicals, unexploded munitions, polluted drinking water and multiple other health hazards. Migrants fleeing desperate conditions do not belong in cages, let alone toxic ones.”
In addition to the other contaminants, detainees could also be exposed to arsenic, mercury, and—very worrisome for young children—lead. These have been found at Superfund sites on other military bases. How big an impact occurs depends on many factors, including the substance itself, the route of exposure, and the sensitivity of the victim. Children’s development is of major concern as well and exposure can cause asthmatic attacks, nerve and organ damage, and cancer.
During the Bush and Obama administrations, according to E. A. Crunden at ThinkProgress, migrant detainees have been held at Superfund sites. Some 1,500 of were housed at a site in Tacoma, Washington.
Evans says there aren’t many legal options to protect the detainees from the toxic chemicals, but adds that it’s important there be accountability. This means the public needs to know what’s going on, what is being done to keep detainees from being exposed, and what must be done to get these sites cleaned up.
One question that gets far too little attention is: Why has a nation that annually spends hundreds of billions of dollars on the military not long ago managed to decontaminate every poisoned base in the country?