Thread: TX-Detained imm families moved from Texas to Pennsylvania

Detained immigrant families being moved from Texas to Pennsylvania facility
Posted Wednesday, Sep. 09, 2009

By ANABELLE GARAY


As immigrant children and their parents depart a disparaged former Texas prison that housed them while they awaited decisions in their immigration cases, advocates are questioning whether the government has fully thought out what happens to the families now.

Federal officials announced last month that the T. Don Hutto facility in Taylor would no longer hold immigrant families and that they would instead be detained at the much smaller Berks Family Residential Center in Leesport, Pa. But with only 84 beds — and more than 100 people once housed at Hutto — some advocates wonder whether there will be enough space, or whether immigrants will be released.

"We still have a lot of questions and would like to hear more details," said Denise Gilman of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, which along with other advocates filed a lawsuit contending that family detention at Hutto was inhumane.

Hutto is set to stop holding immigrant families by year’s end, government officials say, and families have slowly been leaving. Instead of transferring the families to Berks, the government has been trying to process the cases of families at both facilities.

Advocates watching

The Texas facility went from holding 127 men, women and children last month to just 22 people this week. They were either deported to their home countries or released while they pursue asylum or another immigration status to remain in the U.S.

As the change takes place, advocates are watching to see whether the Pennsylvania facility has better conditions, whether cases are handled fairly and whether new problems arise because of the shift.

Hutto opened as a family detention center in 2006, ending a so-called catch-and-release practice that had let families remain free while their immigration cases were settled. The facility was necessary, officials with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement maintained, because many never showed up in court or some borrowed other people’s children and posed as families to avoid detention.

But the facility quickly drew criticism, and the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocates sued the government in 2007 over the detention facility’s conditions.

Attorneys and UT law students visiting Hutto to assist detainees with their immigration cases were astonished by the prisonlike setting and regimen. Children wore drab prison scrubs. Razor wire encircled the site. They lived in tiny cells furnished with bunk beds and a steel toilet and were subjected to head counts several times a day. Guards with the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America trained to detain criminal adults were overseeing children. Parents said guards disciplined children with threats of being separated from their family.

More family-friendly

The Berks facility, by contrast, is a former nursing home and with a reputation among attorneys for being more family-friendly. Younger children stay with their parents, while teenagers sleep in separate rooms. One former resident told The Associated Press that adults and children went on field trips during her stay, refrigerators in the hallways were stocked with fruit and juice and an interfaith prayer group is available. But still, the stays can be far from smooth.

http://www.star-telegram.com/texas/story/1601100.html

Why not accelerate deportations instead? The whole family is together so send them to their home countries, after taking their prints/DNA what-have-you, so they can be identified regardless of fake ID, if they try to return?