Bill to License Baby Jails as Child Care Facilities Clears First Legislative Hurdle

The private prison companies that run detention centers for immigrant kids and their mothers have a problem: They can’t legally hold families for an extended period in Texas unless they are licensed as child care facilities. The Texas Legislature has a solution, though. On Wednesday, a Senate committee advanced legislation that would simply lower the state standards for family detention centers. The prison firms could skip all the burdensome regulations that other child care facilities must deal with.

“The point of the bill is to slap a license on the family detention center without substantially changing their operation,” said Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership, an immigrant rights group. “It’s an attempt to maintain and expand the system of for-profit family detention.”

Family detention centers are used by the federal government to hold immigrant mothers and children who arrive at the U.S. border seeking asylum while their cases are processed. Two of the nation’s three facilities are in Texas, and both are run by private prison corporations. The two can hold about 3,200 detainees.

Critics, including the Texas Pediatric Society, say the facilities cause depression and anxiety and can impede development in children.

Read more: https://www.texasobserver.org/family-detention-baby-jails-texas/