Immigrant activists are fighting to prevent Texas from licensing controversial detention centers as child care facilities, saying these centers are more accurately described as prisons.
They won a victory in court this week. On Wednesday, an Austin district judge issued a temporary injunction blocking Texas’ largest immigrant family detention center in Dilley from being labeled as a child care facility, after activists from the Grassroots Leadership organization sued on behalf of two Central American mothers being detained there.
The judge issued a week-long restraining order preventing Texas officials from awarding a child care license to the privately-run, for-profit South Texas Family Residential Center. The order expires on May 13, when the court will hear the organization’s request for a temporary injunction against new state regulations to license the center.
Family detention camps are prisons. They are not childcare facilities.
“Today, we are glad a judge has agreed to halt, at least temporarily, the appalling practice of labeling family prisons as child care facilities,” said Bob Libal, the executive director of Grassroots Leadership, said in a statement. “Family detention camps are prisons. They are not childcare facilities. DFPS has for a decade refused to regulate these facilities because they do not have authority to do so. The Texas agency has never regulated a facility this large. Yet they came up with a regulation allowing a license in three months. It was not done to protect children, but to protect the Obama Administration’s family detention program, putting children in harm’s way.”
The order comes just days after a similar detention facility in Karnes, which primarily holds Central American mothers and children, was granted a temporary child care license by Texas officials.
Over the past several years, as thousands of Central American mothers and children crossed the southern border to seek asylum in the United States, the Obama administration began placing them in detention centers in Texas, Pennsylvania, and New Mexico as they awaited their deportation proceedings.
Texas Detention Center Criticized For Being ‘Baby Jail’ Gets Child Care License AnywayImmigration by CREDIT: Esther Ysu-Hsi Lee Texas officials have granted a temporary child care license to an immigration…thinkprogress.orgActivists have condemned the practice of immigrant detention, citing numerous allegations of neglect and abuse. There is some evidence that being held in detention could contribute to prolonged mental and physical anguish.
Immigration officials maintain that detention centers are not prisons. But to prevent some mothers and children from leaving, many are slammed with high bail bonds that make it all but impossible to secure their conditional release.
Though the Obama administration has promised to ramp down the detention of mothers and children, activists say that the centers are still little more than “baby jails” and many of the same issues still persist. When a delegation of House Democrats visited Dilley last year, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (IL) nearly broke down after reflecting on his meeting with a 14-year-old child who he “wanted to take home with me.” Most recently, a DFPS inspection turned up deficiencies at both detention centers in Dilley and Karnes. Fixing those issues could lead to a permanent license after facilities comply with the standards.