Children Treated Like Criminals at Immigrant Detention Center

Marisa Treviño 

Thursday, March 22, 2007 

 The T. Don Hutto Residential Facility was converted from a prison to an immigrant family detention center in May 2006. Today, about 208 children are detained with their parents like the hardened criminals who once called the facility home.

Located in Taylor, Texas, the facility is billed by the Department of Homeland Security as a federal refuge and is supposed to be the government’s humanitarian answer to keeping non-Mexican immigrant families together as they wait out their deportation appeals or asylum requests.

Yet, to many, it’s compassionate conservatism at its worst.

Since Hutto’s conversion, reports have trickled out about the not so family-friendly conditions at this facility, which is overseen by the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a contractor hired by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In the fall of 2006, lawyers for some of the detainees reported about substandard food, inadequate medical attention and the plight of the children subjected to sterile penal conditions and a staff more accustomed to overseeing criminals than accommodating children.

It’s the same conclusion found in the most in-depth report to date on Hutto, which sheds light on what is happening to these children because the U.S. government has no standards for family detention.

Last month, the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service released a joint report titled “Locking up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families.”

The 65-page analysis of ICE’s two family detention centers, Hutto and Berks Family Shelter Care Facility in Leesport, Pennsylvania, attempted to present a balanced picture of ICE’s treatment of detainees.

They report that the ICE has a long way to go in how they treat children who are incarcerated with their parents for immigration violations.

For example, according to the report children as young as six years old are separated from their parents at night at the Hutto facility, and staff separate or threaten to separate the children from their parents as a form of discipline.

In addition to being treated like criminals, children are required to wear institutional clothing much like prisoners and are given three sets of clothing: scrubs, underwear, socks and sweatshirts, plus two pairs of shoes. They have to sleep in these same clothes.

Medical attention is sporadic and the quality of the food caused the authors to be concerned as many of the families reported their children getting physically sick after eating it and losing too much weight.

When it comes to doing what children universally do – play – they are even restricted in this area. They are not allowed to have their own toys or receive toys from outside Hutto, nor can they keep any of the pictures they draw or color.

The list goes on.

Since those first reports, the media and advocacy groups have pressured ICE to open the facility so the American people, and the world, can see exactly how detainees are living.

In February, ICE arranged for select media representatives to tour the facility under supervision.

Though some of the reporters on that tour reported signs of ICE’s efforts to “soften” the facility by removing some razor wire at the entrance, positioning artificial plants at the entry gates and hanging colored paper on the walls, all confided that there was no way to mask the fact that the facility is nothing more than a prison.

Given this evidence, there seems to be only one remedy to ensure that these immigrant children are not treated as prisoners and are able to enjoy their childhoods: do not imprison families.