WASHINGTON, Feb. 22, 2007
Small Children In Detention Centers
Awaiting, With Their Families, Action On Their Immigration Status
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Children playing cards at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, Feb. 9, 2007. The detention facility houses families, including children, awaiting action on their immigration status. (AP/Dept. Of Homeland Security)
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A computer class for children – part of the 20-hour per week educational program for immigrant boys and girls who are being held at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, Feb. 9, 2007. (AP/Dept. Of Homeland Security)
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A guard holds open a door during a media tour of the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, Feb. 9, 2007, about 30 miles northeast of Austin. (AP Photo/LM Otero/Pool)
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A children's swing near the security fence at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, Feb. 9, 2007, a former jail which is run by Corrections Corporation of America, according to CCA's website. (AP Photo/LM Otero/Pool)
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In a report being released Thursday, the groups seek the immediate closing of the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, about 30 miles northeast of Austin. The center, which opened in May, used to be a jail and is operated by Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest owner and operator of for-profit prisons and other detention facilities – so many that CCA is in its own right the fifth largest operator of prisons in the U.S., following the federal government and three states.
The groups issuing the report - Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services and the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children – say their findings are based on their members' visits and interviews with detainees, many of whom cried as they told their stories.
At the Hutto site, according to the report, a child secretly passed a visitor a note that read: "Help us and ask us questions."
"What hits you the hardest in there is that it's a prison. In Hutto, it's a prison," said Michelle BranDe, detention and asylum project director for Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children.
The two groups also investigated conditions at the Berks County Shelter Care facility, a former nursing home in Leesport, Pa., about 50 miles southwest of Allentown.
The report says Berks, compared to Hutto, is "less jail-like," with a better education system for children and field trips for families. 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 are suggesting that families who are not found to be a security risk should be released. They also recommend 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," said Ralston H. Deffenbaugh, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. "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."
The Homeland Security Department defends 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, 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."
Other findings by the groups:
The Department of Homeland Security opened the Hutto center after Congress criticized the agency's separation of migrant children from their parents.
The detention centers are operated without official regulations. Immigration and Customs Enforcement relies on custody rules designed for inmates.
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.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Add a Comment See all 44 Comments
- "In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't Jewish.
Then they came for the trade unionist,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade
unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant,
Then they came for the homosexuals,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a homosexual,
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one left to speak for
me."
-- Rev. Martin Niemoeller, German Lutheran Pastor - Reply to this comment
- OK, make the orphanages on this side.
- Reply to this comment
- Fine, keep the anchor baby kids here and deport the parents. Then maybe they'll think twice about coming here to have their kids for free.
- Reply to this comment
- then your problems with who remains in this land will cease to be a bother for you.
Posted by Agnim at 10:59 PM : Feb 22, 2007
It's not just my problem, it's all of our problem. We have laws and they're not being enforced. If YOU care so much about the illegal immigrants why don't YOU go to Mexico and volunteer YOUR time to the poor citizens of Mexico. - Reply to this comment
- Maybe we could DEPORT YOU back to where you originated...
You don't even want to know how far back you'd have to go. This is a country Agnim, not a dumping ground. - Reply to this comment
- No doubt many of those children are Americans by birth, just like you.Posted by Agnim at 10:59 PM : Feb 22, 2007
No not just like me, I was born to legal American citizens. - Reply to this comment
- "Deport the kids to an American run orphanage in Mexico and the parents will follow. Brilliant.
Posted by mdmx66 at 08:20 PM : Feb 22, 2007"
LOL
There is that small problem of deporting AMERICANS!
No doubt many of those children are Americans by birth, just like you.
Maybe we could DEPORT YOU back to where you originated; then your problems with who remains in this land will cease to be a bother for you. - Reply to this comment
- Hmm, sort of mirrors what the rich think of the poor in the US too.Posted by pakaal at 09:51 PM : Feb 22, 2007
You think so. We aren't sending our poor to other countries begging for services. - Reply to this comment
- "Are you really so naive as to think that there are no rich people in Mexico. They don't want the poor people, they don't like the poor people, they think they are peasant peon slaves."
Hmm, sort of mirrors what the rich think of the poor in the US too. Guess that kinda explains what we're doing throwing little kids in jail, huh? Well at least it's a "for profit" prison so they can hopefully get around all those annoying child labor laws and put those kids to work! - Reply to this comment
- Isn't it ironic that Americans care more about the children of Mexico than Mexican citizens do. Are you really so naive as to think that there are no rich people in Mexico. They don't want the poor people, they don't like the poor people, they think they are peasant peon slaves. They think it's funny that we take them in and feed, clothe, house and educate their dregges of society. Mexico should be ashamed.
- Reply to this comment
- THE CHILDREN SHOULD NOT BE IN PRISON!
THEY HAVE COMMITTED NO CRIMES!
Posted by Agnim at 12:34 PM : Feb 22, 2007
Well, what do you want to do with them send them to an Illegal Alien orphanage. Actually that's not a bad idea. Deport the kids to an American run orphanage in Mexico and the parents will follow. Brilliant. - Reply to this comment
- Think about it waste money on keeping kids and parents in prison, where they don't learn anything or spend that money on education to help make the world better and make people smarter seems good to me. Posted by hotks at 02:00 PM : Feb 22, 2007
How's life in la la land, hotks. - Reply to this comment
- stop thinking in terms of legal and illegal.
Posted by hotks at 02:00 PM : Feb 22, 2007
Guess what hotks, America is for Americans and the guests we choose to let in. Somehow that must have went over your head in school. If the kids of illegal immigrants need to be educated why don't they enroll them in their country of origin instead of trying to drag them here to live the "Hollywood Dream" of a rockin good time in America. How about we demand Mexico start taking care of their own citizens and crack down on corruption. How about if your so concerned about Mexicans citizens you aren't down there volunteering your time for the poor of Mexico. - Reply to this comment
- What a hippocritical country we have become!
Posted by me4prezz at 06:01 PM : Feb 22, 2007
What hypocracy it is to allow illegals entry and legals wait for many years. Or maybe we should just open the flood gates and let anyone come. We can flood the system with immigrants and break the entire nation. No govt. No laws. No IRS. No DSHS. No USDOL, USDOD, USDOT, USDO.... We can just drown in illegal immigration so people like you don't feel any guilt for living in a rich country. Will that make you feel better? - Reply to this comment
- What are the crimes of the children? That their parents moved them to a new country or delivered them in a new country? Or are we forgetting that this country was founded by immigrants and that the only "true" Americans were the Native Americans. We are ALL here as immigrants in some way, shape or form and perhaps we should stop being so much like the countries we invade and tell them to stop doing and that is punishing the unfortunate for crimes of what? Living. "....that a country should first make thieves and then punish them"..... What a hippocritical country we have become!
- Reply to this comment
- We are spending billions on a space program to find alien life, and when it gets here we incarcerate it. Sometimes they just magnetically align a planette from the keiper belt and drop it on places like texas after beaming all the kids out of the jails. It creates a redneck employment vacuum and gets rid of all their white trash at the same time. how? ironic.
- Reply to this comment
- I always wondered where those little license plates for bicycles came from...
- Reply to this comment
- I just for a moment wish the civil liberities attorneys had to just one moment compete with the illegal for work.They come here and take up the class room from the American Kids who have paid for them and the illegal then demand we teach them English at our expense.
If we let them out while pending their hearing we will neve hear from them.That is why they are there they had skipped out.
I think the prison is the correct place for them.
Sad as it is gw bush has given our freedoms to them and taken our away. How sad.
The kids probably are Americans as they probably were bourn at tax payers expense to and illegal woman and man.Many get the birth certificate get their freebies and go back to Mexico and live like Queens while the kids here are short changed of their aid.
They need to be shot or sent home which ever would not bother me. The Best of Good Byes from Texas and Frank Bowers - Reply to this comment
- Mdmx66 your idea about hiring spanish speaking tutor, while for you maybe sarcasm, is not a bad idea. Providing education to people...for free? wow what a concept, i mean if we spent money on that where would the money for our prisons and bombs be!!! *** it if they aren't American by law they dont deserve our education because it costs us money! and my money is soo much more important then your lively hood.
Think about it waste money on keeping kids and parents in prison, where they don't learn anything or spend that money on education to help make the world better and make people smarter seems good to me.
And for all of you capitalist gurus out there, think about it educated people contribute to the economy, while uneducated people take wellfare checks. So if you really beleived all that cap good B.S. then you would to create an education reform for immigrants.
stop thinking in terms of legal and illegal. - Reply to this comment
- I think the biggest issue surrounding immigration is the blatant iggnorance, and lack of compassion. I don't know if anyone has ever read the Panopticon but im sure most of you have read 1984. That is what our society is becoming absolute control and management over human life. We are detaining other HUMAN BEINGS, those that eat sleep dream breath and love just like all of us. We are condeming them to live in inhuman condtions for the sake of capitalist "ambitions" our society has truely lost sight of America is. Evreyone of us came here "illegally" i mean hell we started a war because we were sick of the country we were orignally from. The point of America was to be a free land of open borders where the rejected and persecuted people of other societies could come and make a new life. Now in our new age we have become nothing more then a colonialst, oppressive super-power like great brittan was.
We use terms like Alien for the tired and hungry that want a restart, we label citizenship in legal terms as opposed to what someone in a "free" land can bring to our society. All of you who call them illegal and think they should be restricted from coming to American, need to take your own advice and hop on the next plane out of the country. It is time we remember we are human it is time we remember what America was made for and stop detaining people based on nationality and let the melting pot melt. - Reply to this comment
