Click to register for this event

Join us for this firsthand account of what Willamette Law professor and international children’s rights expert Warren Binford discovered when she and her colleagues walked into the Clint Border Patrol Facility on a routine monitoring visit outside of El Paso, Texas, in June 2019. Over the course of four days and through interviews involving approximately 70 children, the team came to realize that hundreds of children were being unlawfully warehoused by the U.S. government in a state of filth, hunger, sickness, and sadness, without any meaningful adult care. Some children reported being assaulted by the Border Patrol while many reported being forced to sleep on concrete floors, including infants and toddlers, in overcrowded jail cells, a loading dock, and a windowless warehouse. Binford explains what had changed in their observations about the government’s treatment of the children in its care that compelled them to go to the media for the first time in 22 years of Flores monitoring visits. Binford lays out the legal framework that applies to migrant children in custody, highlighting both the legal violations, as well as the loopholes that need to be closed to ensure the humane treatment of children, and -- importantly -- how the average U.S. citizen can take action. Binford’s discussion includes powerful direct quotations from the children’s sworn declarations to ensure that their voices and stories are heard and amplified by the American public.

Free for WorldOregon members; $8 general public
Click to register for this event

Warren Binford is Professor of Law and Director of the Clinical Law Program at Willamette University. An internationally recognized children’s rights expert, Professor Binford was invited by legal counsel in Flores v. Barr to help conduct a series of site inspections of especially concerning government facilities where migrant children have been detained since 2017, including the former Walmart, the Tornillo tent city, and most recently, the Clint Border Patrol Facility, among others. Professor Binford was selected as both a Fulbright Scholar in 2012 and the inaugural Fulbright Canada-Palix Foundation Distinguished Visiting Chair in Brain Science, and Child and Family Health and Wellness in 2015. She holds a B.A., summa cum laude with distinction, and an Ed.M., from Boston University, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Cosponsored by The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education and the Anti-Defamation League

Download a flyer for WorldOregon's upcoming events