Thread: Activists complain about conditions in Dilley

By Jason Buch
January 14, 2015

Echoing complaints they’ve voiced since the Obama administration this summer began large-scale detention of immigrant families, activists who recently toured the newly opened detention center in Dilley laid out on Wednesday a series of problems they observed there.

About 200 people are being held in the center that will eventually hold 10 times that.

Those who toured the facility Tuesday said they are already concerned about access to counsel for immigrants detained an hour’s drive from the nearest major city; detainees who speak indigenous languages other than Spanish and have no one to translate; and women and children fleeing violence in their home countries who are being kept in jail-like conditions.

“These families in Dilley consist primarily of traumatized asylum-seeking mothers and children who don’t pose a public security risk and are still fundamentally deprived of liberty,” said Katharina Obser with the Women’s Refugee Commission. “They cannot leave. They are subject to head counts every three hours, and that includes guards walking into their rooms in the middle of the night, and they have no idea when they might be released and in many cases what will happen with their cases.”

They told stories of a woman who spoke only the Mayan language of Quiché whose daughter, who spoke some Spanish, had to translate for her in court, and another woman whose daughter wanted to return to their home country because she was unhappy in detention and didn’t know her mother’s domestic partner back home had raped her and threatened to kill her.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials did not respond to a request for comment.

There have been some improvements to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s family detention policies, the activists said, including regularly weighing children to check if they’re losing weight, increasing the ratio of medical staff to detainees, and giving children a place to stay while their mothers meet with lawyers or government officials and discuss subjects young people might find upsetting.

Obser cautioned, however, that they don’t yet know what the situation will be if the detention center reaches capacity.

The 2,400-bed facility is being built in anticipation that South Texas this year will see an influx of women and children from Central America similar to last year’s.

In Fiscal Year 2014, Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley apprehended about 50,000 immigrants illegally crossing the border in families and another 50,000 unaccompanied children. More than 60,000 immigrants in each group were apprehended along the entire Southwest border.

Immigration officials have said they need to detain families until their court cases are finished to send a message back to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where most of the Dilley detainees are from, that immigrants can’t illegally enter and live in the U.S.

http://www.expressnews.com/news/loca...ey-6016044.php

Nothing short of amnesty for illegals will satisfy this illegal alien supporting activists. Heck, we could house them at the Hilton and it still wouldn't be good enough.