Family detention perpetuates immigration woes
More than two years into the Biden administration, the president is reportedly considering reinstituting one of the most horrific immigration enforcement practices — locking up families in immigration detention centers.
Under mounting political pressure related to border enforcement and detention, asylum restrictions that Biden once described as “violations of human dignity” are being revived. Even worse, the small amount of progress that Biden has made as president toward a more humane asylum system is on the chopping block.
The shocking news that the administration is considering reopening the notorious Dilley detention center for migrant families is the most recent example of backsliding from the White House. Unlike the controversial reimplementation of the Remain in Mexico policy and the administration’s reliance on Title 42, which were both mandated by federal courts, the Biden administration will only have itself to blame if it reopens family detention.
When the Biden administration stopped detaining families in 2021, we were relieved. For years, the Immigration Justice Campaign at the American Immigration Council partnered with other nonprofits to help coordinate pro bono volunteers to provide legal services to the women and children detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley.
While working at Dilley, staff and volunteers bore witness to the misery and injustice that incarcerating women and children causes, including increased suicidal ideation, posttraumatic stress disorder and long-term damage to children locked within four walls for weeks or months at a time.
Our staff and volunteers were also traumatized by what they saw in the detention center. They even faced retribution from detention center guards for their efforts to try to support the women and children detained in Dilley. Tensions culminated in a lawsuit we filed after one of our legal staff members was barred from the center for facilitating a client’s mental health evaluation.
Reports that the Biden administration would like to revisit this horror are incredibly concerning. Parents and children seeking our protection, who have faced unimaginable trauma before even arriving in the United States, should not then be further traumatized by our government.
This news is even more alarming when considering the prospect of family detention in concert with the administration’s proposed asylum transit ban. This rule would severely limit asylum to migrants who do not enter the country through the administration’s — difficult to access — preferred methods, or who haven’t first sought and been denied asylum in transit through other countries.
Considering the resounding evidence of the cruelty migrants have experienced in family detention centers, it is hard to understand the Biden administration’s possible course. Proven alternatives exist to this horrific practice. Community-based alternatives to detention are more humane and less costly than family detention.
In a misguided attempt to tamp down concerns related to increasing border encounters as Title 42 sunsets, the Biden administration is reviving the Trump administration’s old toolkit instead of investing in the humanitarian infrastructure needed to help asylumseekers navigate the complicated U.S. system.
Rather than breathing life into the failed, deterrencebased policies of his predecessors, Biden should look back to the commitments he made when entering office. This administration should fight for the democratic principles that lay the foundation of our immigration system. As Title 42 comes to an end, Biden should fulfill his promise to restore access to asylum.