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NIJC has a new Chicago address at 111 W. Jackson Blvd, Suite 800, Chicago, IL 60604 and a new email domain at @immigrantjustice.org.

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Contact NIJC Communications Director Tara Tidwell Cullen at (312) 833-2967 or by email.

Statement of Mary Meg McCarthy, Executive Director, National Immigrant Justice Center

Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) is deeply disappointed in the opening of the largest immigration detention facility in the country. The new lockup in Dilley, Texas will exclusively detain mothers and children. Initially, the facility will have capacity to detain about 450 mothers and children, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to expand capacity to detain up to 2,400 by late spring 2015.

DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson continued President Obama’s “tough on felons” rhetoric as he boasted about the administration’s efforts to detain those who enter the United States without authorization, but the vast majority of mothers and children who will be warehoused in Dilley came to the United States—usually presenting themselves to Border Patrol agents—because they were forced to flee rampant violence in Central America. During fiscal year 2014, more than half of individuals entering family detention facilities were children, including many infants and toddlers.

Detention is particularly harmful for children and survivors of violence, who frequently suffer psychological trauma and mental health issues. Family detention centers are located in remote places where access to legal counsel is minimal, even though it is critical to helping asylum seekers navigate our complex immigration system to get life-saving relief from deportation.

Rather than locking up mothers and children, the U.S. government should release them on cost-effective, humane alternatives to detention, which cost as little as 70 cents to $17 per person per day compared to the projected daily cost of detention at Dilley of $298 per person. Many of the mothers and children who have fled to the United States have family here who are ready to take them in and help them heal from trauma as they await their asylum hearings. While Secretary Johnson touted a new in-country refugee application process for certain Central American children who have family in the United States, his suggestion that such a limited program is a silver bullet that solves the protection needs of all those in imminent danger is disingenuous and wrongly perpetuates the myth that women and children arriving at our borders do not have legitimate protection needs of their own.

Detaining mothers and children is misguided, inhumane, and a waste of taxpayer dollars. President Obama recently reminded Americans that “we were once strangers too,” and called upon all of us this holiday season “to reflect on those who are strangers in our midst and remember what it was like to be a stranger.” Detaining families is not in line with American values. NIJC calls on President Obama to treat all families humanely and end the use of family detention before more children and mothers are harmed.