• The popular magazine Highlights for Children has condemned the US government’s treatment of migrant children at the US-Mexico border, calling for more humane treatment of children in detention facilities.
• Lawyers who have visited the facilities say detained children have been deprived of toothbrushes, soap, diapers, and clean clothes, and in some cases have been separated from family members.
• “This is an appeal to elevate the inalienable right of all children to feel safe and to have the opportunity to become their best selves,” Highlights CEO Kent Johnson said in a statement.
• Visit INSIDER’s homepage for more stories.

The beloved kids magazine Highlights for Children has weighed in on the plight of migrant children at the US-Mexico border, condemning the American government’s treatment of migrant children who have been detained in dismal conditions or separated from family members.

Reports have emerged in recent weeks of children being locked up in overcrowded, unhygienic facilities, with no adults apart from Border Patrol agents to supervise them.

Though many of those children arrived unaccompanied at the border, some have also been separated from the parents, relatives, or other caregivers that arrived with them, the lawyers said.

“At Highlights, our core belief is that children are the world’s most important people,” the magazine tweeted.

“This is a belief about ALL children,” Highlights CEO Kent Johnson said in an attached statement. “With this core belief in our minds and hearts, we denounce the practice of separating immigrant children from their families and urge our government to cease this activity which is unconscionable and causes irreparable damage to young lives.”

Read more: An 8-year-old was taking care of a 4-year-old because conditions at one Texas Border Patrol station were so dire

Lawyers who have visited the migrant children have recently begun speaking out about their experiences, noting that at one particularly troubling facility in Texas, the children were deprived of toothbrushes, soap, diapers, and clean clothes.

The lawyers also said the children have been forced to look after one another, including kids as young as 8 looking after toddlers.

Though the government recently transferred hundreds of migrant children out of the Clint Border Patrol station, a Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told INSIDER in a statement that the agency has already started “resuming use of the Clint Station” for unaccompanied children.

Johnson said his statement was “not a political statement about immigration policy,” but one “about human decency, plain and simple.”

He urged readers to speak out against family separation and demand “more humane treatment” for the children in detention facilities.

“This is a plea for recognition that these are not simply the children of strangers for whom others are accountable,” he said. “This is an appeal to elevate the inalienable right of all children to feel safe and to have the opportunity to become their best selves.”

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