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Setting Standards for Jailing Families Print E-mail
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released new guidelines last week for detaining immigrant parents and children together at family detention centers. The standards promise a number of legal protections for detainees, but still allow detention officers to use restraints, steel batons, and strip searches to discipline children.

 

refugee_child_fence_from_time.jpgThe family detention standards will be put into affect at the T. Don Hutto detention facility in Taylor, Texas, and at the Berks County Residential Center in Pennsylvania, currently the only two ICE detention facilities in the United States that hold immigrant parents and children together. The government created the new standards following a lawsuit and complaints about detention conditions for families at Hutto.

  

ICE deserves some credit for including non-governmental organizations, including the National Immigrant Justice Center, in the drafting process and adopting some NGO recommendations in the final draft of the standards. But guidelines such as those that allow officers to discipline children based on protocols for adults are unacceptable.

 

Some of the positive standards that were included are:

 

  • Improved access to phones for detainees so that they can communicate freely with legal counsel, extended family, and others

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  • Expanded opportunities for detainees to have access to "Know Your Rights" presentations conducted by legal aid providers

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  • Greater access to legal libraries by detainees, including access to electronic media

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    It is important to note that that these detention standards are not codified in law and, like ICE's adult detention standards, are not enforceable. While advocates for detention reform generally agree that the adult standards should become law in order to ensure detainees' human rights are respected, a lot of changes must be made to the family standards before we push for their codification. NIJC and other non-governmental organizations will continue to negotiate with ICE to make these changes.

     

    Photo: TIME

     
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