Groups seek shutdown of Texas center for immigrant families
By: SUZANNE GAMBOA - Associated Press | ∞
WASHINGTON -- Advocacy groups for immigrant families and the Department of Homeland Security are at odds over detention facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania that critics argue are inhumanely housing adults and young children in jail-like conditions.
In a report released Thursday, groups speaking for immigrants demanded the immediate closure of the T. Don Hutto Residential Center north of Austin, the Texas capital, a facility that once was a jail.
The advocacy groups -- the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services -- said they based their complaints on visits to these sites by their members and interviews with detainees.
At the Hutto site, their report said, a child secretly passed a visitor a note that read: "Help us and ask us questions," it said. The groups reported that many of the detainees cried during interviews.
"What hits you the hardest in there is that it's a prison. In Hutto, it's a prison," said Michelle Brane, detention and asylum project director for Women's Commission.
At a news conference, the groups charged that some families are kept up to two years in the facilities, with those petitioning for asylum or trying to prove they shouldn't be deported, remaining there the longest.
"We are taking people who fear persecution and locking them up," said Ralston H. Deffenbaugh, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
The Homeland Security Department defended the centers as a workable solution to the problem of illegal immigrants being released, only to disappear while awaiting hearings. Also, they deter smugglers who endanger children, said Mark Raimondi, a spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DHS division that oversees detention facilities.
"ICE's detention facilities maintain safe, secure and humane conditions and invest heavily in the welfare of the detained alien population," Raimondi said.
White House press secretary Tony Snow said last week that finding facilities for families is difficult, and "you have to do the best with what you've got. "
The Pennsylvania center -- the Berks County Shelter Care Facility -- has about 84 beds and the Texas facility can house up to 512 people. The groups fear that government will expand detentions in similar facilities.
The facility in Leesport, Pa., about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia, is a former nursing home and "less jail-like," allowing families to go on field trips and having a better education system for children. But it also has problems, the groups said. It is part of a larger juvenile facility housing U.S. citizens charged with or convicted of crimes and detained juveniles.
The groups suggested that immigration officials release families who are not found to be a security risk, and said the federal government should consider less punitive alternatives to the detention centers, such as parole, electronic bracelets and shelters run by nonprofit groups.
"Unless there's some crime or some danger, families don't belong in detention," Deffenbaugh said. "This whole idea of trying to throw kids and their parents in a penal-like situation is destructive of all the normal family relationships we take for granted."
States where immigrants taken into custody
Dozens of illegal immigrants employed by Rosenbaum-Cunningham International, Inc., a Nevada-based cleaning contractor, were taken into custody Thursday at 63 business locations in 17 states and the District of Columbia. The states:
Arizona
California
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Kansas
Maryland
Missouri
Nebraska
Nevada
New York
New Jersey
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Texas
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An Idea wrote on Feb 22, 2007 9:16 PM:Sure, close these centers down, then have the "suspects" stay at the homes of those folks that call themselves advocates. If they have such deep feelings for making sure these families are treated fairly then why don't they serve as their hosts? How long before they would be pushing for their guests to be shipped out?
WesM wrote on Feb 23, 2007 6:21 AM:That would be an awsome idea! But I would also suggest that those 'hosts' should also be required to post a surety bond to make sure the illegals would be available as necessary. After two or three of them lost their businesses, homes or churchs the tune would totally change.
Send them back to their wrote on Feb 23, 2007 7:12 AM:country of origin? Is that so hard?
This makes me sick wrote on Feb 23, 2007 9:45 AM:put them in jail in Mexico... now THAT is inhumane conditions. We need to have more jails like Sheriff Joe in Maricopa county in AZ. It isn't suppose to be a country club!
R2 wrote on Feb 23, 2007 10:59 AM:I strongly suggest that we stop referring to these people as illegal "immigrants," for they are not "immigrants." I look at these people as INVADERS. They are invading every aspect of our society as a whole. Therefore, we should start calling them illegal INVADERS.
Actually the federal ID wrote on Feb 23, 2007 12:52 PM:cards issued by INS refer to them as resident aliens. So ILLEGAL ALIENS works too!
Mark wrote on Feb 23, 2007 1:11 PM:R2 is right. They are illegal invaders and until everyone excepts this we will contine to lose our country little by little each day.
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