4 Days in Clint is a 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 US government in a state of filth, hunger, sickness, and sadness, without any meaningful adult care. Some children reported being assaulted by 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.

Professor Binford will explain 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. Professor Binford will explain the legal framework that applies to migrant children in custody, highlighting both the legal violations by the US government, as well as the loopholes that need to be closed to ensure the humane treatment of children, and how the average U.S. resident can help. Professor Binford’s talk will include direct quotations from the children’s sworn declarations to ensure that their voices and stories are known to and amplified by the American public.