the reporters in the story obtained more than two dozen significant incident reports written by government case workers based on what they have been told by kids who had been held by the trump administration at the border station. those significant incident reports included an allegation of sexual assault against a 15-year-old girl by a uniformed officer as well as retaliation against kids who had requested clean food and drinking water and had their bedding taken away in retaliation for those requests. now, up until this point we have been relying on documents in order to understand what s happening at facilities like that one. children held at these facilities rarely speak to the media themselves out of a quite understandable fear that they might be targeted or deported or retaliated against or but here is something new. tonight nbc news has obtained an
soboroff broke a story about the conditions at a u.s. border patrol station in yuma, arizona. they obtained more than two dozen significant incident reports written by government case workers based on what children had described to them being held there. the report included an allegation of sexual assault and retaliation against kids who asked for clean water and food. and julia sat down with a guatemalan boy who was held there for 11 days. 17-year-old abner describes in detail what he went through, including being held in a cell that was so crowded he was forced to sleep standing up. not knowing what time of the day it was because the lights were always on. and not being able to properly drink water. drink water.
would sit down with us. we have an excellent producer who is fluent in spanish. it took time to speak to abner and his father to convince them to sit down. i think these stories and hearing it from his mouth does have more power to it. and the other thing i just kept thinking the whole time talking to them is i m finding out a lot of details for the first time. abner was interviewed by government case workers right after he left. that s the story we broke on your show two weeks ago about the children who sat down. he talked a lot about the retaliatory measures by these guards, they weren t allowed to get near the windows. they would be yelled at, called names. he was scared to ask for anything. that has been known to our government for months. so it s hard to see this and to hear this and to think that so little justice has been done in the meantime. i know from looking at the transcript and going through the clips of the interview you were able to do with him, i know he