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Detention of Immigrant and Refugee Families: Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children Rem

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SPOKESPERSON AVAILABILITY

Michelle Brané, director of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children detention and asylum program, is available for comment on the conditions for illegal immigrant families held in U.S. detention facilities. Her work is noted in the March 3 issue of The New Yorker ("The Lost Children").

In December 2006, Brané achieved unprecedented access to the Don T. Hutto Residential Center (Hutto) in Taylor, Texas. The Women's Commission's resulting report, Locking Up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families (written with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service), exposed the poor conditions that families—and in particular, children—suffered at Hutto. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) responded to the mounting criticism with various improvements, including Family Residential Standards, adopted in January 2008 at Hutto and the Berks County Family Residential center in Pennsylvania, the only two family facilities currently in use.

Brané said: "Although they are an urgently needed improvement, the Family Standards leave much to be desired. The provisions continue to allow for the discipline of children with steel batons, strip searches, and inappropriate restraining techniques. This is anti-family and un-American. In addition, the new standards do not include provisions for the monitoring of these detention facilities by nongovernmental organizations, which was formerly standard practice."

The White House's August 2007 Fact Sheet on Immigration notes a strengthened force of border security measures by December 31, 2008, including the addition of 18,300 Border Patrol agents, 370 miles of fencing, and an increase of funding to allow the detention of 31, 500 persons.

"The Women's Commission is concerned that a dangerous precedent will be set as additional detention facilities open across the country to fulfill the demands of this increased security effort," Brané saids. "Nongovernmental organizations and the media need to be able to monitor the situation in the least restrictive way possible to ensure that reasonable and humane conditions for detained families are maintained."

LOCATION: Washington, DC

 

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The Women's Commission was established in 1989 to address the particular needs of refugee and displaced women, children and youth.