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New Immigration Policy Undermines Family Values

New York, NY

The Department of Homeland Security announced earlier this week that it plans to expand its family detention program – a decision that will cause undue trauma to women and children fleeing persecution. The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children contends that DHS is not prepared to safely house entire families of undocumented immigrants and urges the agency to reconsider any such expansion as it would be particularly hard on children.

“This expansion is ill-advised,” states Carolyn Makinson, Executive Director, Women’s Commission. DHS currently operates only one family detention facility, in Berks County, Pennsylvania, which has been heavily criticized for leading to a break down in family structure.

A lack of experience in detaining families and a poor track record in the treatment of detained immigrants makes the announcement that these facilities will open in the next several weeks particularly troubling. Existing detention facilities do not adhere to the detention standards adopted by the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration detainees, for example, have died from inadequate medical care and others have been sexually abused.

“This policy expansion will hit asylum-seekers particularly hard,” says Joanne Kelsey, director, detention and asylum program. “The stated reason for this program is to deter illegal immigrants from bringing their children with them in order to avoid detention; yet, it is hard to imagine that a woman fleeing rape, genital mutilation or other gender-related harm would leave her child behind. Families and children should not be treated as pawns in a policy debate; they should be treated with dignity and with respect for their difficult circumstances.”

International standards state that asylum-seekers should not be detained. If nuclear families are to be detained, such detention must be in non-secure shelters that would allow families to stay together, children to attend school and parents to engage in meaningful programs, including counseling to recover from persecution-related trauma. “We urge DHS to reverse this decision and embrace family values,” says Kelsey.