Power

United Nations ‘Supports’ Closure of U.S. Family Detention Centers

“We’re getting international eyes on what’s happening in the United States. It pressures our government to justify how it can continue detaining mothers and children," said Erika Almiron, director of immigrant rights organization Juntos.

The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner states that urgent appeals can be used to clarify and/or bring attention to specific cases. Erika Almiron, director of Juntos and a member of the Shut Down Berks Coalition, told Rewire in a phone interview that WGAD won’t issue its entire report on arbitrary detention in the United States until next summer. Drop of Light / Shutterstock.com

Sixty organizations filed an urgent action appeal to the United Nations (UN) on Wednesday, requesting that UN officials issue an opinion to the U.S. government to end the practice of family detention.

The organizations are calling for the immediate closure of the country’s three remaining family detention centers: Pennsylvania’s Berks County Detention Facility, Texas’ Karnes County Residential Center, and the South Texas Family Residential Center.

The UN’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) from October 11 to 24 toured “places of deprivation of liberty at federal, state and local levels” in the United States, including border patrol locations, family detention centers, and immigration courts. WGAD conducted interviews with 280 people who are detained. On October 24, WGAD released a statement with preliminary findings, saying, “Various governmental, inter-governmental and advisory bodies … have recommended that family detention be abolished.”

The UN Working Group “supports these conclusions.”

The 60 organizations behind the appeal, including the immigrant rights organization Juntos, released a statement saying that detained families require “immediate action as their human rights are being violated every day.”

The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner states that urgent appeals can be used to clarify and/or bring attention to specific cases. Erika Almiron, executive director of Juntos and a member of the Shut Down Berks Coalition, told Rewire in a phone interview that WGAD won’t issue its full report on arbitrary detention in the United States until next summer.

That’s simply “too long,” she said.

“An urgent action appeal creates sort of an abbreviated timeline,” Almiron said. “After WGAD evaluates our appeal, they’re going to ask the U.S. government a series of questions about family detention and the U.S. has to respond within a certain timeframe—and it all becomes public record.”

While the UN can’t force the federal government to close family detention centers, Almiron said there is value in having an expedited, public process.

“We’re getting international eyes on what’s happening in the United States. It pressures our government to justify how it can continue detaining mothers and children,” Almiron said. “The United States has a certain reputation to uphold when it comes to human rights abuses that happen outside the United States, but this sheds light on the human rights abuses happening inside the United States.”

The urgent appeal argues that the government “can employ less restrictive alternatives,” including releasing detained migrants to their family members. Instead, the appeal says, the government is “arbitrarily depriving parents and children of their liberty by engaging in family detention.”

The groups’ appeal outlined the multiple human rights violations inherent in the practice of family detention, including violating the best interests of children, violating federal and local law, and interfering with the right of refugees to seek asylum.

Almiron told Rewire that she holds the Obama administration accountable for family detention’s human rights violations. After the administration brought back the practice in 2014, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson has taken a hardline stance against the tens of thousands of Central Americans who have arrived at the Mexico border seeking asylum.

At the height of the Central American migrant crisis, Johnson famously said, “Our message is clear to those who try to illegally cross our borders: you will be sent back home .… Then there are adults who brought their children with them. Again, our message to this group is simple: we will send you back. We are building additional space to detain these groups and hold them until their expedited removal orders are effectuated.”

Almiron interprets this as the government admitting that it treats detention as deterrence.

“Human rights law says that’s unacceptable; you can’t punish people in this arbitrary way to send a message,” she said. “The most important piece here is that there is no deterrence for people who are running for their lives.”

DHS is in the middle of deciding whether it will continue contracting with private prison companies like Geo Group and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). A DHS committee released its own recommendations regarding family detention on September 30. The report reads, in part:

DHS’s immigration enforcement practices should operationalize the presumption that detention is generally neither appropriate nor necessary for families—and that detention or the separation of families for purposes of immigration enforcement or management, or detention is never in the best interest of children. DHS should discontinue the general use of family detention, reserving it for rare cases when necessary following an individualized assessment of the need to detain because of danger or flight risk that cannot be mitigated by conditions of release.

Eighteen days after the release of the committee’s report, CCA announced that ICE had extended its contract with the private company to run the South Texas Family Residential Center, one of the three facilities mentioned by immigrant rights organizations in their appeal to the UN. Claims of medical neglect have emerged from the family detention center.

Almiron said it’s safe to assume that DHS is not seriously considering ending family detention or ending its contracts with “abusive private prison companies.” At the very least, she said, DHS could hold off on renewing contracts until the end of November, when its report concerning the use of private prison companies will be released.