Statement by Mary Meg McCarthy, Executive Director, National Immigrant Justice Center
Instead of permanently closing its remote family detention facilities, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this week announced a plan for "enhanced oversight" of family detention, including a new advisory committee and meetings where stakeholders may recommend changes to facilities which could hold up to 3,800 women and children by the end of this year.
ICE can no longer kick the proverbial can down the road. It already has recommendations from a variety of organizations for cost-effective and humane ways to ensure immigrants are released into the community with access to case management services and legal counsel.
Nearly all of the mothers and children held at the U.S. government's family detention camps are asylum seekers. Rather than locking up these families, ICE must use its discretion to release them, connect them with case management services, or place them on alternatives to detention programs. Family detention beds cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $350 per person, per day while alternatives to detention are a fraction of the cost, at 17 cents to $17 per day.
NIJC staff toured the family detention center in Dilley, Texas, this week and was discouraged to learn that the Department of Homeland Security is quickly nearing completion of the largest immigration detention center in the country. To what end?
Rather than building barracks, the U.S. government must provide individuals with alternatives to detention and ensure access to counsel. As President Obama contemplates his legacy, does he really want to be remembered as the president who resurrected the use of detention for young mothers and children in remote locations when there were better options available?