Human Rights Groups Call for Closure of Texas Jail Holding Undocumented Immigrants

Human rights groups are calling for the U.S. government to shut down a jail in Texas where about 200 immigrant children, some only infants, are being detained. Ten months ago the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began holding families in The Hutto facility in Taylor, Texas, owned by the private prison company, Corrections Corporations of America. Many of the families held at the facility are seeking asylum in the United States. For months immigration officials refused to allow outside groups or the media into the center. But late last year researchers from the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service were allowed inside.

The two groups have just released a report titled “Locking Up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families.” Michelle Brane is co-author of the report. She is the director of the detention and asylum program at the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, and she joins us from Washington, D.C. And with us here in New York is Immigration Attorney Joshua Bardavid. Earlier this week he filed a habeas petition on behalf of five members of a Palestinian family being held in another immigration prison in Texas.

We repeatedly called both the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Corrections Corporations of America to invite them on the program. They did not respond to our requests.

* Michelle Brane. Director of the detention and asylum program at the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children. She is co-author of the report “Locking Up Family Values.”

* Joshua Bardavid. Immigration attorney in New York. He is representing families held in immigration prisons in Texas.

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