The dangers of co-mingling prisons, detention centers and politics
In addition to prisons, in 2014 the U.S. government massively expanded its detention centers for immigrant families. According to reports from the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) and Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC), between October 2014 and September 2015, the U.S. government apprehended 68,334 children accompanied by a parent at the southwest border — a 361 percent increase since the previous year. Keep in mind that more than half of all the children who entered into family detention facilities in that time were six years old or younger.