Jailing Immigrant Mothers in El Paso

Among the prisoners in the nearby 800-bed jail are about one hundred women flown in from New Bedford, Massachusetts following an immigration raid at a manufacturing shop. Immigration authorities have reported that 116 of the women, believed to be mostly from Guatemala, were brought here to the El Paso Service Processing Center (EPC) on Montana Street. Another 90 were reportedly taken to another immigrant jail in Texas.

"We have heard horror stories of women rounded up at work in Massachusetts and sent to jail in Texas without being given a chance to say goodbye to their families--children coming home from school and not knowing where their mothers were," says Anderson who is president of the El Paso Borderlands Chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

Word of the raid reached the Borderlands Chapter from NOW national offices, explains Anderson. And several news reports have followed the response of Massachusetts officials. Last Saturday, Massachusetts social workers visited both jails in Texas and managed to get nine mothers released on humanitarian grounds.

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