NYT: U.S. Gives Tour Of Family Detention Center That Critics Liken To A Prison

U.S. Gives Tour of Family Detention Center That Critics Liken to a Prison



Pool photo by L.M. Otero
Gary Mead, an Immigration and Customs official, speaking Friday at the T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center for illegal immigrants.

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
Published: February 10, 2007
TAYLOR, Tex., Feb. 9 — Responding to complaints about conditions at the nation’s main family detention center for illegal immigrants, officials threw open the gates on Friday for a first news media tour.

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Inside the fluorescent-lighted corridors, plastic plants had been hurriedly installed and some areas repainted, lawyers for some detainees said, and officials acknowledged that pizza was on the lunch menu for the first time. The detainees could not be interviewed.

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Critics said the picture presented on Friday conflicted with what they had observed. “At Hutto, we found prisonlike conditions imposed on families with no criminal background, including asylum seekers,” said Michelle Brané, a lawyer for the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service who co-authored a report on family detention to be released on Feb. 22.

Barbara Hines, clinical professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin who runs an immigration clinic and has visited clients inside, said Friday that “I don’t think children should be incarcerated at all.”

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The American Civil Liberties Union has also been studying conditions as it considers filing a lawsuit contending that the government was violating a 1997 settlement on the treatment of detained juveniles.

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