A federal judge has issued a harsh condemnation of the mass detention of immigrant women and children, calling conditions in privately run facilities “deplorable.” The ruling by U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee gives the Obama administration 90 days to either release the more than 2,000 women and children being held in two Texas prisons or to show just cause to continue holding them. Immigration lawyers say the ruling has already had a “groundbreaking” impact as Texas judges have started ordering women and children’s release without bond, though many have been forced to wear electronic ankle monitors. Republicans are calling on the Obama administration to appeal the ruling. But at a hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and House Judiciary Committee—and House Judiciary Democrats said the practice must end.
Barbara Hines talking:
I’m very pleased with Judge Gee’s ruling. I think what Judge Gee’s ruling does is confirm what advocates have been saying since last June and what members of Congress have been saying, is that running these detention camps is a violation of the Flores settlement, which was a settlement that was entered in 1996 regarding the treatment of children. And the most important pieces of Judge Gee’s ruling are, number one, that children cannot be housed in secured, unlicensed facilities. These are facilities that do not have a child welfare license from the state of Texas, and there is—or—and there is absolutely no independent oversight. The other thing that Judge Gee recognized is that children should be released—there’s a preference for release—family unity is very important, and that children should be released to their parents. And in this case, it would be parents who are detained with them.
Judge Gee gave the government until August 3rd to respond and then a certain amount of time—I think it’s one week—for the government to respond. And she proposes that the government has an implementation program within 90 days, because, really, we have now been running illegal detention camps for more than one year. So I hope that the government and the Obama administration will as quickly as possible accede to Judge Gee’s ruling.
first of all, they’re not really ankle bracelets. I think “bracelets” really doesn’t represent what these are. The women use the word “grillete” in Spanish, which is a shackle. They are very cumbersome. The batteries don’t work. The cords are very, very short. Women are like almost chained to the wall trying to keep these things charged. The government, just like they have done since last summer, is they never have an individualized determination of flight risk. So, asylum seekers, there should be a presumption that they should be released. So, instead of saying no bond, what ICE is doing, in a coercive way, is telling women, “The only way you can get out is to have an ankle shackle put on your leg.”
I can give you an example of one of our clients. Her husband is a lawful permanent resident, so she has significant family ties in this country. She was released on an ankle shackle, and her leg swoll up because it was put on too tightly. Her daughter says that people look at her when they walk out, because normally the people that have these ankle monitors are prisoners. And these are women that have suffered such tremendous trauma. Their children have suffered such tremendous trauma. And without asking—making an individualized determination whether there are certainly other less intrusive methods for release of the women. So, I think they’re a significant problem and not the answer to how to deal with asylum seekers, mothers and children, fleeing violence in Central America.
The ankle shackles are made by the BI company. And I just recently learned that the BI company was bought out by GEO, and GEO is the private prison company that runs Karnes. So, as you can see, this is—there’s a lot—this is intimately tied into the private prison industry. So they profit either way, whether they’re in prison at Karnes—GEO runs the prison—or if they have these ankle shackles put on them.
RAICES and the Karnes Pro Bono Project and other lawyers were actually involved in Lilian’s case. And we were desperately trying to get hold of her, so we could get papers signed, so that we could take over her case—she had been represented by another lawyer—and we were denied access to her.
This, unfortunately, is not an isolated incident. Several weeks later, we represented another client, who also was put on the suicide watch. And what I just heard from Lillian is hauntingly familiar and so similar to what our second client spoke about when she was put into isolation and separated from her child, while the GEO—or, the medical unit watched her, their alleged suicide watch.
How does this happen? One of the reasons is because GEO is a for-profit prison, so you can cut corners or you want to cut corners whenever you can. It’s a coercive environment. It is a jail. This is not a family residential center. It’s a joke to call this a residential center. And we’ve had so many complaints, both at the Karnes facility, the Berks facility in Pennsylvania, and Dilley, over inadequate medical care.
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Barbara Hines, longtime immigration lawyer with many clients who are detained in the Karnes and Dilley detention centers. She is a fellow at the Emerson Collective. She was formerly at the University of Texas School of Law Immigration Clinic.
— source democracynow.org