Statement of Mary Meg McCarthy, Executive Director, National Immigrant Justice Center
Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) condemns the Obama administration’s determination to continue detaining mothers and children who flee to the United States seeking protection from violence in Central America, despite a federal court order requiring the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to end family detention.
Yesterday, the Obama administration filed a response seeking to avoid implementing a federal district judge’s July 24 order to immediately release the mothers and children detained at three detention facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania.
In unequivocal language, the California court found that the Obama administration’s expansion of family detention during the previous 12 months was a material breach of the Flores settlement, a nearly two-decades-old agreement governing the custody and treatment of immigrant children apprehended by immigration officials. The ruling clarifies that all children must receive the same high standard of treatment regardless of whether they travel alone or with parents.
NIJC is baffled by DHS’s insistence on sticking with family detention despite all of the harms that have been catalogued to date. There are other more humane, less costly options available that would keep families together while ensuring that individuals appear for court hearings. DHS should use its discretion to release these mothers and children or place them on the least restrictive alternative to detention programs (ATDs) and connect them with case management and legal services. ATDs would enable mothers and children to reside with family members in the United States and retain legal counsel to help them tell their stories as they seek protection in immigration court. NIJC urges the administration to immediately comply with the court’s order governing the detention of children, and to close family detention centers once and for all.