"Did I say 'detention camps'? I meant 'happy camps'!"

I can't believe that this is going on, practically in my own backyard, and I had no clue!

 

In the past year, the number of raids on employers of illegal immigrants in the past year by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has increased a lot. The problem is, many undocumented workers have spouses and children who are either U.S. citizens, or legal immigrants.

In the process of rounding up massive numbers of these undocumented workers, (and supposedly in the name of keeping families together) families together, ICE has been sweeping up entire families (including the aforementioned legal immigrants and U.S. citizens) and placing them in "family detention centers". Just typing that phrase makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

By placing these families together in these "detention centers", as you can probably imagine, the effects of the incarceration on families has been demonstratably terrible :

The report lauded the goal of keeping families together but urged DHS to close the Hutto facility, saying that "prison-like institutions" are not appropriate for families. "Family detention is not one that has any precedent in the United States, therefore no appropriate licensing requirements exist," the report said.

[...]

The 72-page report also criticized the educational services for children; the food service and rushed feeding times for children; the health care, especially for vulnerable children and pregnant women; the therapeutic mental health care as insufficient or culturally inappropriate; and the recreation time as inadequate for children. The review said that families were being held for months in Hutto and for years in the case of the longer-established Berks facility.

The report also cited inappropriate disciplinary practices used against adults and children, including threats of separation, verbal abuse and withholding recreation or using temperature control, particularly extremely cold conditions, as punishment.

And sadly, the ones that are hurt the most are the ones least able to do anything about it: the children.

A raid last month in Michigan resulted in some pretty dire consequences for the children of those swept up in the raids:

Patrick, at a press conference, and later in a private conference call with Homeland Security officials, protested the decision to fly 90 of the detained workers from Massachusetts to Harlingen, Texas, before state social workers had a chance to inquire about their child-care needs, potentially leaving many children with inadequate care. Two young children were hospitalized yesterday for dehydration after their nursing mothers were taken away, state officials said. Another 7-year-old girl called a state hot line seeking her detained mother. It was unclear last night where their mothers were.

"What we have never understood about this process is why it turned into a race to the airport," Patrick said. "We understand about the importance of processing; we get that. But there are families affected. There are children affected."

But yeah, it's all about paying for "the sins of the father", right?

The national news has been fairly quiet about this. Heck, local news has been fairly quiet about this, and I live here! We get CBS 11!

The family detention center is starting to attract some internation attention, though. From a report last Thursday:

A planned United Nations visit to a highly criticized central Texas center for detaining immigrant families was never approved by federal immigration officials, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman said Thursday.

ICE didn't immediately respond to questions of why the visit by Jorge Bustamante, the Human Rights Council's independent expert on migrant rights, wasn't approved.

Bustamante had been expected to tour the T. Don Hutto facility on Monday.

[...]

Civil liberties and immigration advocates sued federal officials in March on behalf of several children detained at Hutto, which typically houses about 400 non-criminal immigrants awaiting deportation or other outcomes to their immigration cases.

The groups contend families at Hutto are subjected to psychologically abusive guards, inadequate medical care and inhumane conditions in a facility run like a prison.

Seriously, if an visit by an international rights expert that was previously announced and planned isn't allowed, then who would be? What's being hidden? And why?