Report Decries Immigrant Centers As Prison-Like
NationalBy Michaela Jackson - Life is bleak for hundreds of illegal immigrant families lodged in detention centers as they await decisions on their immigration status, according to a report released Thursday.
Washington, D.C. - Scripps Howard Foundation Wire - infoZine - Congress instructed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to open the detention centers in an effort to keep families from being separated, and the newest, largest facility, the T. Don Hutto Residential Center was opened in a former prison outside Austin, Texas, in 2006.
"However, ICE chose to develop a penal detention model that is fundamentally anti-family and anti-American," said the report by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
Researchers gauged conditions by visiting Hutto once and the Berks County Shelter Care Facility, housed in a former nursing home outside Philadelphia, twice. They talked with current and former detainees as well as employees of the facilities from October to February.
"We found prison-like environments that are wholly and fundamentally inappropriate for children and families and critical shortcomings in the areas of medical and mental health care, recreation, discipline, food service and access to counsel," said Emily Butera. She is one of the report's two authors and a policy advocate for the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
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Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist.
Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat.
Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter.
Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.
Translation
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.