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In May 2018, a photograph of two children sleeping inside a fenced enclosure was widely circulated via social media with accompanying text stating that it pictured a kids' concentration camp in the U.S.: This photograph dates from 2014 (during the Obama administration) and was not directly related to a mid-2018 controversy over Trump administration policy of separating children from undocumented migrant parents at the U.S. border. The picture was one of several that accompanied an Arizona Republic article about a detention center for undocumented migrant children in Nogales, Arizona. What this photograph depicts is not a concentration camp as the term is most commonly used (i.e., a facility where political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labor or to await mass execution) but rather a temporary holding facility/processing center for undocumented children who were apprehended entering the U.S. by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) during the height of an unprecedented surge of child migration from Central America that took place in 2014: Some might argue that the pictured facility was in fact a detention center where children were held in conditions that were woefully inadequate for their numbers, and thus it was concentration camp-like in those aspects: However, others maintained that -- despite the difficult conditions -- the facility was not comparable to a concentration camp in that the children kept there were treated humanely, were provided with medical care, and were held only until they could be placed with relatives or other caretakers pending adjudication of their cases: Still, in 2016 the conditions of similar detention facilities were being described as deplorable: Debate continues about how undocumented migrant children who come to the U.S. (whether alone or with their parents) should be dealt with, and where and how they should be housed until their status has been resolved. No approach is likely to satisfy critics at both ends of the political spectrum.
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