'We couldn't shower, they mistreated us,' said 12-year-old detainee at Texas detention center

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Tuesday, July 2, 2019
SF rally against detention centers
Dozens of parents and children rally outside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office in San Francisco on July 1, 2019.

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Fifty parents and their children came out in full force by rallying outside of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office in San Francisco on Monday.

In the crowd was a mom who was in a detention center with her 5 and 7-year-old children.

"It was a horrible experience. We were hungry. They mistreated us, they didn't care that kids were hungry," Blanca Marroquin said.

A 12-year-old migrant girl was held inside a Border Patrol station in Texas and described sleeping on the floor and seeing kids locked away from their parents. "They didn't give us enough food, we couldn't shower, they mistreated us, and they were mean to us."

RELATED: Bay Area congresswomen outraged by Texas detention centers

Sarah Norr, along with other moms, protested against the border funding bill approved last week.

"I'm a Jewish American and not very long ago people like me were being held with their children in prison camps. We look back at that time in history and say 'why didn't people do enough to stop it?'. Never again, we can stop it now," Norr said.

RELATED: Congress passes $4.6 billion package to care for migrant families at border

The $4.6 billion dollar package continues to be controversial.

The House and the Senate agreed that the funding would not be used to fund the border wall but to feed and provide shelter for the migrant detainees.

No one from the Speakers office came out, but in a statement, Taylor Griffin, a spokeswoman for Speaker Pelosi, stated:

"House Democrats will continue to confront the President over the harmful policies that manufactured this crisis and endanger children and families in the Administration's custody."

From the $4.6 billion package, more than $1 billion will go toward shelter and to feed migrants detainees and almost $3 billion to care for unaccompanied migrants.

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