Families Say Detention Centers Feel Like Prison

New America Media, News Feature, Julie Johnson, Posted: Feb 27, 2007

EDITOR'S NOTE: Immigrants who end up in detention while their asylum cases move through the court find that the facilities that house them and their children are so much like prison that many asylum seekers are re-traumatized. Julie Johnson is a writer for New America Media.

Doctors told Dominica that her unborn baby was underweight and Dominica needed to eat more. But Dominica (whose name has been changed) had to spend her third trimester with her two young daughters, ages 3 and 9, at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center as they waited for their asylum case to move through the courts. She said there wasn't enough time during meals to feed her daughters and herself.

"I have to feed my children first," Dominica said, according to a report released last week about Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) facilities that house immigrant families. "They don't eat quickly."

Families report prison-like conditions at Hutto, where food is passed through a slot, only children are allowed to drink milk (despite doctors' requests for pregnant women to be allowed milk rations) and, depending on how far back you are in the cafeteria line, meal times can be as short as 10 minutes.

The report, "Locking up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families," finds that the two immigration detention facilities for families in this country may be re-traumatizing families and their children, many of whom are seeking asylum from persecution in their home countries.

"These people who have committed no crime are being treated worse than we treat criminals," says Michele Brané, director of the Detention and Asylum Program for the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, a New York-based nonprofit that conducted the study in collaboration with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS).

The report says these practices are out of step with Congress' directives on how to handle the detention of non-criminal immigrant families with children.

This year Congress reaffirmed its instruction to the U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) agency to stop separating families and only use detention as a last resort. Families should be housed in "non-penal, homelike environments until the conclusion of their immigration proceedings."

But Hutto is far from a homelike environment. Instead, everybody, including children, must wear prison-issued uniforms. If not housed in the same cell, a parent can't comfort their crying child at night unless a guard gives permission. Children aren't allowed to keep the pictures they color.

Many women have reported being shackled when traveling for routine doctor appointments. According to the detention report, one woman being screened for tuberculosis told the radiologist she was five months pregnant, but the doctor refused to give her a lead screen to protect her fetus during the X-ray.

These facilities represent a major shift in U.S. policy toward families with children whose asylum or visa cases are in the immigration courts.

Until a few years ago, families apprehended for immigration violations (which are not criminal violations) were generally released with orders to appear before an immigration judge. After 9-11, ICE began detaining families, which often meant parents were detained and children were sent to shelters or foster care.

ICE can now detain up to 600 men, women and children in one of two immigration detention facilities for families.

ICE opened the first facility in 2001, the Berks Family Shelter Care Facility in Leesport, Pa. At Berks, a converted nursing home run by the county, families stay in dorm-like rooms and have greater access to recreation areas and more hours of education for children, including ESL classes.

In contrast, Hutto is a converted medium-security prison run by the Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private provider of detention and corrections services. Opened last summer, it houses up to 512 people, significantly increasing the number of families the government can detain.

Parents and children at both facilities say guards threaten to separate families as discipline for even minor child misbehavior, as they did when a 6-year-old threw a tantrum because the guards wouldn't let him keep a picture he colored, according to another detainee.

Nine-year-old Nelly told Brané she would be taken from her mother if she misbehaved, because, she said, "that's what [the guards] say."

ICE defends these family detention centers as a better option than "catch and release," which doesn't ensure families will show up for immigration court hearings. The centers, ICE says, also maintain family unity and may deter smugglers from exploiting children in the hope that if they're caught with children, they'll be released.

But many say the government's policy of who to detain and who to release is too random to justify detaining children when other options exist.

Advocates ask why these families -- many of whom are seeking asylum from persecution back home -- are detained at government expense (costing between $180-$195 per detainee per day) when less expensive and less traumatic alternatives are being used for some immigrants and criminals on parole.

"ICE portrays [their options] as either detaining families in a prison, separating them or letting them go," Brané says. "But there is a huge range of other options that both take care of government concerns and treat people humanely."

The report suggests using electric monitoring bracelets or partnering families with nonprofit groups that would oversee their case and ensure families report to immigration officers and court hearings. For those not eligible for release, it reiterates Congress' urging to house families in homelike settings.

Since the advocate groups began visiting the two facilities, ICE has made some changes. When the groups reported that shower water was scalding young children, the facilities fixed the water temperatures. They increased the hours of schooling at Hutto to match those at Berks. Photos from a press tour of Hutto last month show stuffed animals, which Brané says were noticeably absent during prior visits.

Such alternatives could have prevented a Colombian mother's three daughters - ages 7, 9 and 12 -- from spending two years in detention while their asylum case was in court appeals, according to Brané. They were eventually released, but it's too early to tell what effect their detention will have on the young girls.



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