A planned detention facility for migrant children is being built on a toxic site, a new report says.
“The area is contaminated with lead, arsenic, benzene, PFAS, and other chemicals associated with increased risk of cancer and neurodevelopmental damage. Other contaminants detected at the site include volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, which contaminate the air and threaten human health through vapor intrusion causing nausea, headaches, and damage to the nervous system, kidneys, and liver,” the environmental legal advocacy group Earth Justice claims in the Tuesday report.
The Trump administration proposed to house 7,500 unaccompanied migrant children at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, according to a July 2018 draft report by the Department of Health and Human Services for the U.S. Air Force.
The Christian Post reached out to the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement for a response but did not hear back by press time.
According to publicly available documents obtained by Earth Justice, the detention facility will partly be placed on top of an old landfill. Other contaminated sites at or near where the children will be held, should the proposal move forward, include a previous small arms firing range, which contaminated the soil with lead, a fuel storage facility, and an Aqueous Film Forming Foam release area, which may have put polyflouroalkyl substances in the soil or groundwater.
“This report makes it clear that detaining migrant children on GAFB is not just ill-conceived, it is dangerous and could damage the lives of thousands of children for years to come. Migrant children fleeing desperate conditions do not belong in cages, let alone chemically polluted cages,” the report concludes.
In its July draft report, HHS claimed that any potential environmental harm done to the children will be reduced or avoided before they arrive.
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SOURCE: Christian Post, Napp Nazworth
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