January 10, 2012
Contact: Bob Libal, Grassroots Leadership, blibal@grassrootsleadership.org, (512) 971-0487
Kirsten Bokenkamp, ACLU of Texas, kbokenkamp@aclutx.org, (713) 942-8146 X 109
Michelle Brané, Women’s Refugee Commission, MichelleB@wrcommission.org, (646) 717-7191
More Than 50 Organizations Call for End
to Detaining Immigrant Families
Groups Demand That ICE Prioritize Release and Alternatives for Detaining Immigrant
Families
AUSTIN – A broad coalition of more than 50 national, state, and local immigrant, civil rights,
and faith organizations today called on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to end the
practice of detaining immigrant families, including small children and infants.
In an open letter to ICE director John Morton, the groups urge ICE to prioritize release and
alternatives to detention for immigrant families awaiting asylum or immigration hearings. ICE has
issued a Request for Proposals for 100 new family detention beds in Texas in a closed, secure
facility. The new detention center would replace the Berks County Family Shelter Care Center in
Pennsylvania, which will be closed in March.
“In the last 10 years, our government has created a large-scale immigration lock up system
that pulls in thousands of the country’s most vulnerable, including asylum seekers and families
with children, at enormous cost to the U.S. taxpayer,” said Lisa Graybill, Legal Director for the
ACLU of Texas. “Putting innocent children in jail is not just bad policy – it is inhumane and un-
American, and it is time for the government to stop.”
The current Request for Proposals seeks submissions for closed, secured facilities. A 2007
report by the Women’s Refugee Commission and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
that examined the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas and the Berks facility concluded
that both facilities place families “in facilities modeled on the criminal justice system, with little
regard to national and international standards for the care and protection of children and families.”
The Hutto detention center, where ICE housed families from 2006 to 2009, became a national
embarrassment as reports emerged that children as young as eight months old were forced to
wear prison garb, locked in prison cells, denied adequate food, and threatened with separation
from their parents if they cried too much or played too loudly. The Hutto detention center was
the subject of a lawsuit, a human rights investigation, multiple national and international media
reports and a national campaign to end family detention.
“We are acutely disappointed in the Obama Administration for continuing the needless detention
of families,” said Bob Libal of Grassroots Leadership. “The Obama Administration took positive
steps in rolling back family detention in 2009 by releasing families from the T. Don Hutto
Family Residential Facility in Taylor, Texas, and canceling a solicitation for three new family
detention centers,” the signatories wrote to ICE. “The closure of the Berks facility is an excellent
opportunity for the administration to continue to demonstrate its commitment to detention system
reform by ending the practice of detaining families for once and for all.”
“We call on the administration to prioritize release of immigrant families in all cases. We urge
the administration to assign social workers to manage families’ cases rather than placing them in
detention. For families without housing, the administration should partner with non-profit shelter
or child welfare organizations experienced in supporting asylum-seeking and immigrant families
to resolve any issues preventing the direct release of families. Social workers with proven
track records providing family and child welfare services offer the only appropriate expertise for
supporting families in civil immigration proceedings.”
“Most of these families are asylum seekers or victims of violence. They are very vulnerable
and often have no place to go.NGO’s are willing to work with ICE to develop shelter options that
are both humane and more cost effective than closed detention,” says Michelle Brané of the
Women’s Refugee Commission.
Signatories to the letter include American Civil Liberties Union, America’s Voice Education
Fund, Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Center for Constitutional Rights, Detention Watch
Network, DreamActivist.org, Grassroots Leadership, Human Rights First, Human Rights Defense
Center, Justice Strategies, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, National Day Laborer
Organizing Network, National Immigration Forum, National Latina Institute for Reproductive
Health, Religious Institute, Rights Working Group, Southern Poverty Law Center, United
Methodist Church General Board of Church and Society, Women’s Refugee Commission, and
more than 40 state and local organizations from across the country.
To read the full letter and the list of signatories, please visit www.grassrootsleadership.org.
###
