The predicate was defined by the opening post/title of thread.

Precisely so: Is this how you treat kids in New York? Which is what I see as the essential question - is the treatment that was experienced by these visitors as so distressing actually an indication of the way poor people in a similar situation get treated by the authorities?

Because unless the Brays were telling fibs about what happened, and unless what happened was somehow someone-off cock-up which doesn't reflect the way the system normally works, what they experienced is just not good enough.

I'd like to believe that in fact it was just some monumental cock-up. But nobody seems to be suggesting that it was.