ICE turns to broader use of familial detention
After outcry, agency says situation now ‘untenable’
SANTA ANA, Calif. — The Trump administration is calling for the expanded use of family detention for immigrant parents and children who are stopped along the U.s.-mexico border.
Immigration authorities on Friday issued a notice that they may seek up to 15,000 beds to detain families. The Justice Department has also asked a federal court in California to allow children to be detained longer and in facilities that don’t require state licensing while they await immigration court proceedings.
“The current situation is untenable,” August Flentje, special counsel to the assistant attorney general, wrote in court filings seeking to change a long-standing court settlement that governs the detention of immigrant children. The more constrained the Homeland Security Department is in detaining families together during immigration proceedings, “the more likely it is that families will attempt illegal border crossing.”
The proposed expansion comes days after a public outcry moved the administration to cease the practice of separating children from their migrant parents on the border. More than 2,300 children have been taken from their parents since Homeland Security announced a plan in April to prosecute all immigrants caught on the border.
In all, about 9,000 immigrants traveling in family groups have been caught on the border in each of the past three months, according to federal authorities.
Immigrant advocates contend that detention is no place for children and insist there are other alternatives to ensure that they and their parents attend immigration court hearings, such as ankle bracelets or community-based programs. The federal court ruled several years ago that children must be released as quickly as possible from family detention.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement currently has three family detention facilities: a 100-bed center opened in Pennsylvania in 2001 and two much larger facilities opened in Texas in 2014. Only the Pennsylvania facility can house men, and all of the detainees at the Texas centers are women with children.
Most families spend up to a few weeks in the facilities and are released once they pass an asylum screening.
They are then given a date to appear before an immigration judge in the cities where they are headed to see if they qualify to stay in the country legally or will face deportation.
Those who do not pass initial screenings can seek additional review in a video conference with a judge, a process that lasts about six weeks.
But that’s much shorter than the six months or a year many families were being held several years ago when the Obama administration began detaining mothers and children in a bid to stem a surge in arrivals on the border, said Manoj Govindaiah, director of family detention services at the RAICES advocacy group in Texas.
At the time, many were being held until their immigration cases — not just the initial screenings — were resolved.
In Friday’s notice, ICE said the family detention beds should be in state-licensed facilities, allow freedom of movement for detainees and preferably be located in states along the southwest border.