[migrawatch-public] Shut Down Hutto; Rethink the Detention of Families

http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/04/19/18401639.php

Summary
The Department of Homeland Security's T. Don Hutto immigration
dentention center in Taylor, Texas treats detainees, including children,
like criminals. It's time to close it down and adopt more humane
immigrant detention policies. Megan McKenna is senior coordinator of
Media and Communications of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and
Children, a member of Detention Watch Network, a national coalition of
organizations and individuals working to reform the U.S. immigration
detention system. IMMIGRATION MATTERS regularly features the views of
the nation's leading immigrant rights advocates.

Shut Down Hutto; Rethink the Detention of Families
New American Media

WASHINGTON -- The recent string of raids to net and jail the
undocumented is part of a new strategy that targets immigrant families,
including asylum-seekers, in the name of national security. The
separation of parents from their children that has resulted in many
cases has led to a nationwide outcry and a recognition that we need to
re-examine how we treat immigrants in detention, particularly families.

The Department of Homeland Security's replacement of the so-called
"catch and release" policy with "catch and return" has resulted in a
significant rise in the number of families detained, even those with
very young children, for indefinite periods of time, in some cases in
prison-like conditions.

When the Department of Homeland Security opened the T. Don Hutto
Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, in May 2006, it proudly proclaimed
the former prison as a new model for the increased detention of
immigrant families. DHS claimed the new facility was "specially equipped
to meet family needs" and would put an end to the separation of families
in detention, which advocates had decried for years.

They didn't quite get it right. When the Women's Commission for Refugee
Women and Children and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service visited
Hutto in December, we found that the families held there were treated
like criminals.

They lived in cells, complete with open-air toilets, had no privacy, had
highly restricted mobility and only an hour of recreation per day, had
poor medical care and no prenatal care, and were subject to questionable
disciplinary tactics, including threats of separation of children from
their parents.

Children had no soft toys and inappropriately received only an hour of
education a day — high school-age children were being taught when a
child should be toilet trained. (We've been told by DHS that education
has since increased to 7 hours a day, but the quality is still unclear).

Perhaps the clearest indication of how bad things were at Hutto was when
a child secretly slipped a note that said, "Help us and ask us
questions," into the hand of an outside visitor.

More
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=6937a81f83ef42ad527c4e260ce0b36c

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