Federal immigration officials are releasing hundreds of Latin American mothers and children from immigration detention centers, sharply curtailing the practice of long-term detention of migrant families seeking asylum in the United States.
The publication McClatchy DC reported that nearly 200 individuals were released over the weekend, though an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency spokesperson was unable to confirm that figure for ThinkProgress on Tuesday.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency will release women and children who are not public safety threats, and who are deemed eligible for asylum or another form of humanitarian relief. That involves providing proof that they have a credible or reasonable fear of going back to their countries and undergoing a criminal background check.
Once released, heads of households — generally the migrant mothers — could be “considered for enrollment in Alternatives to Detention Programs (ATD),” which includes wearing a GPS tracking device.
“DHS has determined reconsideration is appropriate for custody decisions of arriving families who have established eligibility for asylum, or other relief under our laws,” ICE agency spokesman Richard Rocha said in a statement released Monday night. “Understanding the sensitive and unique nature of housing families, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is evaluating cases of residents housed at the agency’s family residential centers.”
It’s likely that mothers and children who stayed in detention the longest will be the first to be released, especially those who have been detained beyond 90 days.
“The populations are expected to initially drop at these facilities,” Rocha stated. However, he added that intake will continue at these facilities — an acknowledgement that future migrant mothers and children who cross the border could still be detained.
As of Monday, there were 2,172 mothers and children still at the three family detention centers: Berks Family Residential Center in Pennsylvania and Karnes County Residential Center and South Texas Family Residential Center, which are both in Texas.
Between October 2013 and September 2014, more than 68,541 unaccompanied migrant children as well as 68,445 family units comprised of migrant women and their children entered the country through the southern border. Girding themselves for more arrivals, the Obama administration took an “aggressive deterrence strategy” that aims to deter would-be migrant border crossers by holding those who have already crossed in detention without the option to pay bond.
Bryan Johnson, a partner at Amoachi & Johnson Attorneys at Law in New York, has represented numerous migrant families since last year’s surge. He described ICE’s move to release more migrants as a “good step forward,” but told ThinkProgress that as long as the detention centers remain open, there’s cause for concern. “I think that deterrence would still be a factor because what other reasons are the centers open for? They’re to detain people and to deter them from coming to the United States,” Johnson said.
While Johnson doesn’t condone alternatives to detention methods like GPS tracking devices, he admitted that it’s “preferable to family detention.” Still, for people like his clients who live in Long Island, New York, it could be “a burden” to report to a facility in Queens, New York, a journey that could hours. Other people could be pregnant and find the devices too restrictive on their ankles.
Immigrant advocates and lawyers have heavily scrutinized the use of detention centers, stating that the “no release” policies violate the Flores Settlement, which requires migrant children to be placed in the least restrictive setting possible or to be placed with a family member or legal guardian. But often, that family member could be their mother, who is unable to secure a bond.
Advocates also argue that both children and mothers are subjected to poor conditions, like freezing rooms and inedible food, at the detention centers.
Oscar Herrera, the husband and father of a migrant mother and child who were kept at the Karnes facility for 11 months, told ThinkProgress in May, “It’s ugly inside the detention center. The food — it’s so bad. Sometimes [the guards] also treat them badly inside.” Migrant women have also twice gone on hunger strikes at Karnes to protest medical conditions and the lack of appropriate food.
Carol Anne Donohoe, a Pennsylvania-based lawyer whose clients at the Berks detention facility have “celebrated” their one-year detention, echoed those sentiments to ThinkProgress in May. Several mothers had told her that “the answer to everything is to drink water,” including children who were sick.
Johnson also recalled some of the horrors that his clients went through, stating that one child “got sick with … pneumonia, and instead of treating her, a four-year-old girl, they put her in an isolation cell with her mom for nine days until it got so bad they had to rush her to the hospital.”
“As long as ICE and DHS has custody of these children, they’ll be harmed,” Johnson insisted. “Their job isn’t to take care of children, but to remove the children. There’s a big conflict of interest. Anything short of that is a failure.”
Last month, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson promised that he would roll back on the long-term detention of migrant mothers and children, writing in a statement, “I have reached the conclusion that we must make substantial changes in our detention practices with respect to families with children. In short, once a family has established eligibility for asylum or other relief under our laws, long-term detention is an inefficient use of our resources and should be discontinued.”