Thread: Officials deny mistreatment of immigrant families

Officials deny mistreatment of immigrant families
Advocates contend that care isn't adequate at Taylor detention facility, others.

By Bob Dart

WASHINGTON BUREAU


Friday, March 16, 2007

WASHINGTON — A top federal immigration official denied Thursday that illegal immigrant families have been mistreated at detention facilities where they are sometimes held for months while awaiting a decision on whether they will be deported or granted asylum.

But advocates for the immigrants told a House subcommittee that some children and pregnant women have not received adequate care while being held at a privately run detention center in Taylor that is under the jurisdiction of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

"Discontinue the detention of families in prison-like institutions," Michelle Brane, an official with the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children, urged the Border, Maritime and Global Terrorism subcommittee of the Homeland Security Committee.

The controversy arises from a change last year in immigration policy that has resulted in many more non-Mexican illegal immigrants being held in ICE detention centers, including the Texas facility.

Under the previous "catch and release" policy, "non-Mexicans who entered the U.S. without proper documentation were issued a notice to appear at a future hearing and then released," said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the security committee. "Of course, the overwhelming majority of these people did not appear for their hearing, but instead made their way to the interior of the country and disappeared into American society."

The new policy is called "catch and return," in which most illegal immigrants, other than Mexicans, are detained in federal facilities until a decision is made on whether they can stay or must be deported. Most are eventually deported, but the proceedings can drag on for months if they apply for asylum. Most undocumented Mexicans who are caught coming in illegally are returned across the border immediately.

Problems have arisen because whole families are being detained at the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility in Taylor and the Berks Family Shelter Care Facility in Leesport, Pa. The Taylor center is operated by a private firm, the Corrections Corporation of America.

John Torres, director of the ICE Office of Detention and Removal Operations, said immigrant families are not being mistreated at these facilities.

But Brane said she had interviewed a pregnant woman with two daughters who complained about not getting enough food at the Taylor facility and needed medical care. She said the detention center is a converted prison and that families are kept in cells.

The families are not being subjected to prison-like conditions in Taylor, said Richard Seiter, executive vice president of the Corrections Corporation of America.

He told the committee that the company made major renovations to the former prison and that housing areas were modified to allow families to socialize and interact.


http://www.statesman.com/news/content/n ... immig.html

I have seen them on tv they didn't look bad to me, can't these people opt to be deported right away, I don't think they are being forced unless they don't want to leave the country.

But Brane said she had interviewed a pregnant woman with two daughters who complained about not getting enough food at the Taylor facility and needed medical care.

They will lie and lie and lie to get out. Send Branie to the state pen and to hear the same stories from those hardened criminal/prisoners too. They all want steak dinners, massages, a softer bed, booze and other unmentionables.

Yea, in Branie's world that's mistreatment. In reality, it's incarceration.

Dixie