Refugees fleeing gang violence, blackmail, torture, and murder in Central America hope to end up on U.S. soil after weeks of walking, but of those who make it across the border, many end up in family detention centers for months. Countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala have among the highest homicide rates in the world, according to the UN, and women and children are the most vulnerable. In 2014, over 66,000 children traveling with their mothers fled from Northern Central America to the United States.

What is a family detention center?

At “Beyond the Wall: Women and Children Refugees: A Central American Crisis,” an event hosted by the New York City Bar Association last Tuesday, human rights advocates and health researchers got together to start a dialogue about the complex Central American refugee situation. The discussion focused on a UNHCR study, “Women On the Run,” which was released  last October detailing the crisis and its current challenges.

One family detention center in particular, the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, has gotten a lot of attention from advocates. The Dilley facility is the first family detention center in the United States since the Japanese family centers during World War II. It opened in December 2014 and is the largest in the world–though the term family center may be a bit misleading because men get separated from their families and sent to all-male centers that can be located thousands of miles away. Human rights advocates have reported numerous instances of verbal and physical abuse as well as insufficient food and water for the detainees.

Read More: Mother’s Day Appeal Outside the White House Aims to Abolish Family Detention Centers

"I was just trying to save my son's life" ~ Ada fled violence in #CentralAmerica https://t.co/UUqup2A23o #refugees pic.twitter.com/rtqmKcXxch

— UNHCR Washington (@UNHCRdc) May 20, 2016

Fleeing Violence

The UNHCR’s study, “Women on the Run” details the dangerous situations that women and children in many Central American countries face, forcing many to flee to the United States for safety. These women have been through serious domestic abuse, extortion, death threats, and rape. One of them tells of how she was two months pregnant when her cousin grabbed her and raped her on the street in front of his gang. Many others say that they see dead bodies on the streets daily. It can be the choice between certain death, and risking everything to have a chance of a normal life if granted asylum in the United States.

But even if they make it across the U.S. border, these refugees are not necessarily safe. Many end up in the family detention centers, where the women and children can stay for months without any information about their cases or even when they can talk to lawyera.

Imprisoned for over a year

Ana has spent the longest time in an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) family detention–almost 13 months–according to Aseem Mehta, a fellow at Immigration Justice Corps. Her last name is kept secret for legal reasons; her case is still pending. Back in El Salvador she was blackmailed by a gang that thought her family made a lot of money, and if she didn’t regularly pay them off they said they would kill her. Ana’s husband had already been granted asylum, but she and her daughter were sent back home.

But in 2014, Ana and her 13-year-old daughter decided to make the long journey across the border–a 2000-mile path through the desert, hot during the day and very cold at night. When they reached Texas three weeks later, they were held at the Dilley family detention center–a 50-acre trailer park in the middle of the 100-degree desert, hours away from the closest city. At Dilley, the mothers’ average age is 26, the children’s is 7, according to Mehta.

The horrors beyond the wall

Mehta told the story of how he met Ana in July 2015. He came to Dilley as part of a pro-bono effort with one purpose: get the detainees out of there. After hard work and some difficult months, he managed to get Ana and her daughter out of the family center in September 2015. A victory for Ana, but her freedom is still confined, her case still pending, and she still doesn’t know how it will end. For now, she is reunited with her husband and mother-in-law in New York.

The conditions in which the families live inside the center are worse than most people are aware of. According to Ana,

We got food once or twice daily, sometimes they forgot, so maybe only crackers. When I asked for more food for my daughter the officials said it’s not their responsibility to feed my kid, and it was my own fault she was hungry.

Dr. Allen Keller, director of the Bellevue/New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, conducted a study at Dilley last summer. At the NYC Bar event, he called it “a disgrace” and spoke about the “icebox.” When refugees first arrive–many wet from passing through rivers–the women and children are stripped of their sweaters and placed in a 50-degree room on a cold cement floor. This is where many kids catch pneumonia.

“This is a population that is horribly traumatized, with PTSD, depression, and hopelessness,” Keller said.

And he said that as a result, many kids start to bed wet and become vegetative: dull, passive, and unresponsive. Injured women and children are denied medical help. One woman had a seizure but the guards wanted to put her on a plane anyway–risking her life–until Keller stepped in. People with chicken pox sleeps on the floor next to pregnant women, who if they catch the disease could pass it on to their fetuses, risking severe brain damage.

A collection of affidavits recovered by Fusion gives other examples of abuse–a child complaining of a dislocated shoulder was told to just drink more water. Hundreds of kids were given the adult dose of a hepatitis vaccine, after which a woman said her child got a severe earache, but she was scared to bring her back to the doctors again.

On June 1, human rights advocates cheered a Texas court decision to delay the issuing of a child care license to the Dilley facility due to low standards.

major victory against one of the nation’s largest immigration detention center, Austin, TX https://t.co/ql9plIFaMg

— ACIJ (@ALimmigrant) June 2, 2016

During Dr. Keller’s study at the Dilley center, he was part of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. He witnessed how guards arbitrarily filled out questionnaires during asylum interviews without asking refugees all the questions–even when they were sitting there in the room. The list of abuses of power goes on and on.

According to Mehta, the family detention centers are really just prisons–where women are required to wear an ankle GPS at all times–and serve the purpose of discouraging more refugees to come to the United States. It’s also a way of keeping children locked up without actually putting them in prison.

What can we do?

It’s easy to feel hopelessness when hearing about the fates of the families in Dilley, but Mehta urges Americans and their politicians to start talking about it and to change the dialogue, and to stop seeing refugees as a threat to our national security.

These people don’t flee their homes to exploit the U.S. government and get things for free; they flee because they don’t have a choice–it’s a humanitarian crisis. Trump may be the one talking about building a wall, but as Dr. Keller points out, this has happened under a liberal government. We all need to keep pressuring politicians to make a change. We all need to help more women like Ana.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Family Detention Centers: Women and Children Locked up After Fleeing Violence appeared first on Law Street.

On a dusty former oil-mining field in Dilley, Texas, enclosed by barbed wire fences and watched by guards day and night, hundreds of mothers and their children who are seeking asylum in America wait. They wait for a chance to plead their case to a judge. They wait for days, weeks, sometimes months. They wait for a future.

The South Texas Detention Complex is one of three such holding facilities–officially dubbed “family detention centers”–that hold undocumented immigrant families (mothers and children who are without a husband and father) while their asylum request is processed. Many come from Central America’s Northern Triangle: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Some are fleeing gang violence, among the most lethal in the world. Others are escaping domestic abuse and oppressive governments.

But former detainees and advocacy groups are fighting to shut down these three family detention centers that continue to operate in the U.S. due to unlivable conditions and held an event to further their cause outside the White House this week. The other two facilities besides the one in Dilley are in Karnes City, Texas and Leesport, Pennsylvania. Advocates of closing the centers saw a boost last summer when a federal judge in Texas ruled the facilities as operating against the law.

Last week, however, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services issued a temporary child care license for the Karnes County Residential Center, which can house 580 migrants at a time and is privately operated. This would allow Karnes to continue operating under the law by operating under the title of “child care facility.” A small victory for advocates against the license came yesterday when a judge in Texas ruled on behalf of Grassroots Leadership, an organization focused on ending for-profit incarceration, issuing a week-long restraining order on the child care license.

Though the number of illegal immigrants coming to the U.S. from Central America has dipped after a surge that peaked in the summer of 2014, 98 percent of Dilley’s 2,400 beds are filled with women and children from that region, according to Lindsay Harris, Legal Fellow at the American Immigration Council, or AIC.

“They are here because they’ve expressed a fear of returning back to their home country,” Harris said during an interview on Wednesday. There are six AIC members on the ground at the dirt plains of the Dilley complex, assisting asylum seekers through the legal process.

According to Harris, the legal process of seeking asylum is as follows:

Between 80 to 150 families each day are put through an informal interview with a member of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), who rotate every two weeks between the three centers. The one to three hour interview is informal, and the families are allowed a legal representative (such as Harris), though many do not have one because of the deluge of daily interviews.

Those whose “credible fear” (the metric by which a migrant’s asylum request is judged: whether their situation back home is horrifying enough for them to stay in the U.S.) is rejected are subject to review by a judge. They are usually represented pro bono by a lawyer from an organization such as AIC.

Harris noted that most families do pass that stage and can further pursue their asylum claim, but are required to wear bulky ankle monitors and have weekly or monthly check-ins with immigration officers. She said rulings that don’t go the asylum seekers’ way aren’t always fair.

“These are survivors of trauma and torture, rape, incest, domestic violence,” she said. “Some of them have a very hard time articulating to a male asylum officer what they’ve been through.”

Recently released mothers are monitored via these bulky ankle bracelets, which require frequent charging and can’t be removed. [Image courtesy of Jeff Pearcy via UUSC]

Ten of the women who were previously detained and able to convincingly articulate their need to stay in the U.S. came to the front step of the White House yesterday, many with their children, on a mother-to-mother mission to shut these facilities down.

The “Let Hope Bloom” event, held under a chilly gray sky at Lafayette Square just feet from the White House’s north gate, saw the mothers–all from Central America–handed certificates and a bouquet of lilies, daisies, and azaleas from the event’s sponsors, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) and other religious and secular non-profit groups.

“The greatest gift we pray to give would be the ending of family detention,” Reverend Sharon Stanley-Rea of the religious group Disciples of Christ said at the event.

Giant Mother’s Day cards were signed by the mothers, their children and supporters, which were then delivered to two White House officials at the west gate. The cards were addressed to four mothers at the White House: First Lady Michelle Obama, Second Lady Dr. Jill Biden, Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, and Obama Assistant Cecilia Munoz.

A mother signs a direct appeal to the most powerful mother in the White House: Michelle Obama. [Image courtesy of Alec Siegel via Law Street Media]

One of the formerly detained mothers traveled from Alexandria, Virginia with her daughter to the White House.

“I’m happy [in America], it’s much better than being locked up,” she said in an interview with Law Street Media (through a translator), preferring her name be left out for privacy concerns. “When I was in detention I didn’t suffer physically but mentally it was really tough.”

She left her home in La Ceiba, Honduras to escape threats of extortion and was housed at the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas for 15 days before being released to pursue her claim of asylum and joining family members in Alexandria.

“I think my mom is very strong for the things that she’s gone through for me,” said her daughter, 15, also through a translator and requesting her name not be used for privacy concerns. “Coming to this country is not easy and I know that she did it for me.”

This mother fled Honduras after threats of extortion with her daughter, now a 9th grade student in Alexandria, Virginia. [Image courtesy of Alec Siegel via Law Street Media]

Hannah Hafter, Senior Program Leader for Activism at UUSC, one of the sponsors at yesterday’s event, recently spent two weeks at the facility in Karnes and saw conditions unsuitable for children to spend any amount of time living in.

“There is no humane way in allowing children to grow up in detention,” she said in a phone interview with Law Street Media. She said babies are not allowed to crawl on the floors and that basic movement is restricted. She sees the centers as inherently flawed. “They can’t have enough toys, they can’t have enough classes to make [the centers] acceptable.”

An alternative method to family detention centers, according to Harris, would be to allow the asylum seekers to independently integrate into communities, with periodic check-ins with law enforcement, while they wait for their asylum request to be processed.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) opened a controversial family detention center in 2014 to accommodate the influx of families coming from Central America. The center, in Artesia, New Mexico, was closed in late 2014. The migrants who were being housed at the time were transferred to Dilley or Karnes.

Officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the DHS branch that handles the family detention centers, did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing, and neither did representatives from Dilley or Karnes.

Last summer, Jeh Johnson, Secretary of DHS, released a statement supporting reforms to the detention centers, citing the increase in the facilities’ capacity as a response to an increase in illegal immigrants from Central America.

Harris, the legal fellow with AIC who spoke at the “Let It Bloom” event yesterday, noted that these facilities are a waste for every party involved: government resources, time, and taxpayer dollars. (She said it costs one thousand dollars to house a family of three).

“These are not criminals,” she said “They’re seeking protection and they should be given information and access to council, not put in detention.”

Editor’s Note: This post was updated on 5/6 to clarify the asylum process.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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