An ambitious new project brings together over 100 artists who have used the accounts of detained migrant children to create work with an urgent purpose

In June last year, a group of volunteer lawyers, doctors and mental health experts visited a US Customs and Border Protection facility in Clint, Texas, which held migrant children separated from their families at the border. Their task was to record the accounts of the unaccompanied minors, some as young as toddlers, in government custody to assure the US was not in violation of the Flores agreement, a 1997 legal settlement that requires the federal government to provide minimum basic levels of care to detained migrants under 18. The conditions the volunteers witnessed there – children sleeping on concrete floors, toddlers in stained clothing denied access to showers, sleeping mats next to filthy open toilets, children chilled to the point of illness – so appalled them that they filed a lawsuit against the federal government, and told their stories publicly.

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