A picture of the current structures on the Dilley site taken last week.
The family detention center known as the “T. Don Hutto Residential Center” opened in May 2006. Most of the families previously housed at this residential center, like those currently housed at the Artesia and Karnes Detention Centers, were families awaiting adjudication of their asylum claims. For the most part, the facility was a staging area for families waiting to be put through the deportation machinery the government has so efficiently developed to almost “guarantee” the expedited removal to their home countries. What is most appalling is that none of the families held at the former prison were charged with offenses other than illegal entry.
In 2007, the Women’s Refugee Commission released a report, Locking Up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families, drawing heavily on research conducted at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in March 2007 on behalf of 10 juvenile plaintiffs housed in the facility at the time, claiming that the standards by which they were housed was not in compliance with the government’s detention standards for this population. In August 2007, the ACLU settled the lawsuit, and on August 6, 2009, federal officials announced that T. Don Hutto would no longer house immigrant families. In September 2009, the last families left the facility and were moved to the much smaller Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania.
The town of Dilley, Texas, population 3,989.
One would hope we learn from our mistakes and from our history; nothing is farther from the truth.
Fact sheets and press releases from ICE tout the benefits of these facilities, including the T. Don Hutto Residential Center.
Recent reports from volunteer attorneys providing free legal representation to the women and children imprisoned at Artesia and Karnes prove otherwise. A prison for women and children cannot be made right. These facilities are nothing but well-oiled deportation machinery run under the semblance of due process and rule of law. Women and children are considered prisoners and treated as such. They are intimidated with detention for extended periods of time: mothers are coerced to sign forms they do not understand or warned they will be taken to a higher security prison and their children removed to foster care. The misinformation or outright lies told to these women by facility and government staff mean that the volunteer attorneys tirelessly working to free these women and children are the ones who respect the rule of law and make the broken and dysfunctional immigration system work within the confines of these prisons.
To add insult to injury, ICE has just announced it will open an additional facility in South Texas to house adults with children. The facility will be located in Dilley, Texas, a small unassuming oil town in the middle of nowhere. The center, ICE reports, is in response to the influx of adults traveling with children apprehended along the Southwest border. Expected to open in early November, the South Texas Family Residential Center will be the fourth facility the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using to detain and expedite the removal of adults with children.
Another picture of the land where the new facility will be built.
It is sickening to read that this concerted, well-thought-out, and purposeful imprisonment of innocent mothers and children seeking refuge from violence, bloodshed and murder is touted by ICE as a method that ensures “timely and effective removals that comply with our legal and international obligations, while deterring others from taking the dangerous journey and illegally crossing into the United States.”
Volunteer attorneys are successfully slowing down the deportation mill at Artesia; they are effectively preventing this monster from grinding out vulnerable mothers and children. So what does the government do? Find other remote locations where access to counsel is limited if not impossible, and build another deportation machine. How can we as a country say that women and children seeking refuge deserve imprisonment? Imprisonment will not deter mothers from saving the lives of their children by sending them North. Imprisonment will not prevent teenage girls raped by gangs from making that perilous journey before they are raped again. Imprisonment will not prevent women fleeing from the brutal and socially perpetuated domestic violence at the hands of their husbands. We should be ashamed of building more prisons for women and children. But, hey, prisons are profitable so there is no question that some will profit from this shameful chapter in our history.
Written by Annaluisa Padilla, AILA Second Vice President
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If you are an AILA member who wants to volunteer at Artesia or elsewhere, please see our Pro Bono page or feel free to contact Maheen Taqui at mtaqui@aila.org–we have volunteers scheduled through mid-October but are looking for more as the work continues and we could really use your help.
If you aren’t able to come help in person, consider donating at http://www.aila.org/helpthevolunteers. And thank you!
To watch videos of the volunteers sharing their experiences, go to this playlist on AILA National’s YouTube page.
