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News > World

Migrants, Activists Demand End to US Family Detention Centers

  • 1,300 mothers and children are being held in family detention centers in Texas.

    1,300 mothers and children are being held in family detention centers in Texas. | Photo: Reuters

Published 8 June 2015
Opinion

Hundreds of undocumented migrant families are being held in sub-standard detention facilities while awaiting trials as they flee Central American violence. 

Pressure is mounting on U.S. immigration officials to release undocumented migrant mothers and children and make the system more humane, after it was recently revealed at least 600 families are being held in detention centers, with one teenage mother attempting suicide after being denied parole.

The government has thrown millions of dollars at two large detention centers in response to the tens of thousands of migrant families who crossed the Rio Grande into Texas last summer. The great majority were from Central America, fleeing violence and terrible living standards. Now thousands are being held without parole as they await trial, including 1,300 mothers and children.

RELATED: Immigrant Mothers Held in US Detention Centers on Hunger Strike

Activists are now calling on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to improve conditions and allow at least children out of detention.

"Neither the ICE nor the private owners of its family detention centers are capable of providing the levels of care for vulnerable people like pregnant mothers that are even marginally acceptable by any humane, legal, moral or American standard," Migrant Rights Activist Rachel Gore Freed told the LA Times, after visiting the Karnes City, Texas, detention center.

The woman who tried to kill herself earlier in June, 19-year-old Lilian Yamileth from Honduras, had been detained since October after crossing the Mexican border illegally. The mother of a four-year-old told officials that the child’s father threatened to kill her and that she had received rape threats. She was found with her wrists cut, which ICE told investigators was "a surface-level abrasion" and that it was "a non-life threatening injury."

RELATED: Detention of Immigrants Violates Fundamental Human Rights

"The individual was evaluated by medical professionals onsite who confirmed that the minor injury was not life-threatening, but that the help of specialized mental health care providers was appropriate," ICE spokesman Richard Rocha told Huffington Post. "ICE takes the health, safety, and welfare of those in our care very seriously. ICE is closely monitoring the situation and continues to investigate the circumstances."

A court case is underway where the plaintiff claims the current system contravenes an 18-year-old settlement, Flores vs. Meese, which rules that migrant children must be released or housed in the “least restrictive environment.”

California District Judge Dolly Gee made a preliminary ruling that unlicensed centers, like the ones in Karnes City and Dilley, both in Texas, cannot house migrant mothers and children.

Meanwhile, in May 136 Democrat members of Congress petitioned Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson to desist from detaining families.

"We cannot continue to hear reports of serious harm to children in custody and do nothing about it," they said. "Detaining mothers and children in jail-like settings is not the answer."

ICE has responded, pledging to improve its facilities while Judge Gee’s ruling is confirmed.

RELATED: Migrant Mothers, Children Could Be Freed from US Detention

“We are moving in the direction of closing these centers down,” said Jonathan Ryan, executive director of the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, according to the Associated Press.

Last year, immigration services came under fire for housing the a number of unaccompanied children crossing illegally into Texas in a converted warehouse, which Democratic Texas Rep. Henry Cuellar called a “humanitarian crisis.”

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