Washington – Immigrant families, many with small children, are being kept in jail-like conditions in Texas and Pennsylvania, according to advocacy groups that say the Texas facility is inhumane and should be shut down.
In a report being released today, the groups seek the immediate closure of the T. Don Hutto Residential Center north of Austin, the Texas capital. The center, which opened in May, used to be a jail.
The groups, Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, based their findings on their members’ visits and interviews with detainees. At the Hutto site, a child secretly passed a visitor a note that read: “Help us and ask us questions,” the report said. The groups reported that many of the detainees cried during interviews.
“What hits you the hardest in there is that it’s a prison. In Hutto, it’s a prison,” said Michelle Brane, detention and asylum project director for Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children.
The Pennsylvania center – the Berks County Shelter Care Facility – has about 85 beds, and the Texas facility can house up to 512 people. The groups fear that government will expand detentions in similar facilities.
That facility, a former nursing home in Leesport, Pa., near Philadelphia, is “less jail-like,” allowing families to go on field trips and having a better education system for children, but it also has problems, the groups said. It is part of a larger juvenile facility housing U.S. citizens charged with or convicted of crimes and detained juveniles.
The groups suggested that immigration officials release families who are not found to be a security risk and that the federal government should consider less punitive alternatives to the detention centers, such as parole, electronic bracelets and shelters run by nonprofit groups.
The Homeland Security Department defended the centers as a workable solution to the problem of illegal immigrants being released, only to disappear while awaiting hearings.
Also, they deter smugglers who endanger children, said Mark Raimondi, spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DHS division that oversees detention facilities.
“ICE’s detention facilities maintain safe, secure and humane conditions and invest heavily in the welfare of the detained alien population,” Raimondi said.
