Afghan Woman Attempts Suicide in Texas Detention Center, Six Months After Arrival

Samira Hakimi was six months into what was supposed to be a maximum three-month-long stay at a South Texas immigrant detention center when she tried to take her own life.

“They told us you will only be a couple of days in there,” Hakimi, an 31-year-old Afghan national, told the Huffington Post in an interview. “I never thought that I would be detained here for such a long time. That I’m detained here because I’m from Afghanistan and that’s all. But I’m human.”

Hakimi's private lawyers say she attempted suicide in hopes it would free her young children from the prison-like detention center. It's an act of desperation that's become eerily commonplace in U.S. immigrant detention facilities, where federal immigration officials sometimes hold detainees for months without explanation. Many have fled violence and oppression in their home countries only to end their life in a U.S. holding cell, victims of the crippling depression and stress that comes with modern immigrant detention.

Hakimi originally entered the U.S. with her husband, two young children, her brother, and her brother's wife and newborn child. In Afghanistan, the family had run a private high school and university that followed a Western curriculum, taught in English and offered scholarships to women — all clashing with Taliban tradition. After years of constant violent threats from Taliban officials, Hakimi's lawyers say the family decided to pack up and start over in the U.S.

Read more: http://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2017/05/26/afghan-woman-attempts-suicide-in-texas-detention-center-six-months-after-arrival (San Antonio Current)