A lot has happened in the last year to shed light on the reality of detention at Hutto. The detention center is a former medium-security prison that now holds immigrant families, mostly women and children.

In August, the ACLU announced a landmark settlement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to improve conditions at the facility. Yet even as it celebrated the improvements that resulted from its lawsuit, the ACLU maintained that jailing immigrant children is inappropriate and that "the facility retains its essential character: it was a medium security prison managed by the Corrections Corporation of America, a for-profit adult corrections company."

In May, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Migrants Jorge Bustamante toured the United States and was denied access to the Hutto detention center, despite being invited by the United States to tour immigrant detention centers and having the visit previously authorized by ICE. In an interview with Latino USA after his visit, he told Maria Hinojosa, "The kind of stories you hear are close to being unbelievable." 

The T. Don Hutto blog provides information about the movement to shut down Hutto and to oppose the jailing of immigrant children and families in such conditions. This month, the community around Hutto is holding a toy drive to collect gifts to deliver to children inside the facility.

The T. Don Hutto blog also has posted a video about the detention center, and Citizen Orange posted several useful links today, including the text of a letter that a 9-year-old Canadian child wrote to the prime minister of Canada telling him "I want to get out of the cell."

[The image of the letter is from the ACLU.]