200 detainees move into Dilley immigration center

By Jason Buch, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
January 9, 2015

HOUSTON





DILLEY - About 200 women and children from Central America have been moved into portable housing at a new detention center here being built to deal with the surge of families that crossed the Rio Grande into South Texas last year.


On a state highway west of town, next to the Dolph Briscoe state prison where guards on horseback oversee inmates harvesting spinach and mustard greens, the onetime camp for oil field workers is now a 480-bed detention center for families from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

By May, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to have the capacity to hold 2,400 people here, making it the largest immigrant detention center in the country.

In the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, Border Patrol agents in the Valley apprehended more than 60,000 immigrants, with some traveling as families, others as unaccompanied children. The vast majority of them came from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras - Central American countries suffering from serious economic problems and largely unchecked gang violence.

Surge response
The center, which will cost $290 million to build and operate, helps fill the sudden demand for space caused by the surge, which overwhelmed immigration officers. The U.S. government had all but abandoned family detention until last year - the one immigration holding center in the country that housed families had fewer than 100 beds.

With almost no place to hold people, ICE revamped a second detention center in Karnes County for families and was forced to release thousands of people with orders to appear later at immigration hearings.

With the large new facility, Dilley becomes a focus of the national debate over whether it's appropriate to detain families. Activists say many of these women and children have legitimate asylum claims and will be allowed to stay in the U.S. eventually, and that holding them in a prison-like setting is inhumane.

Now, administration officials say, they need to hold women and children from Central America until their court cases are resolved to send a message to those considering coming to the U.S. illegally, even as President Barack Obama takes executive action to give millions who have been in the country illegally for at least five years protection from deportation.

Information, ads
This week, federal officials announced they would begin informational campaigns to teach immigrants in the U.S. illegally about the president's new deferred action program, as well as advertising campaigns in Mexico and Central America warning potential immigrants that the policy won't apply to them.

Congressman Lamar Smith, R-San Antonio, introduced legislation Thursday that would, among other things, prevent the Department of Homeland Security from using fees to carry out the president's deferred action policy and make it easier to quickly deport children back to countries that don't border the U.S.

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