Shut Down Hutto; Rethink the Detention of Families

WASHINGTON -- The recent string of raids to net and jail the undocumented is part of a new strategy that targets immigrant families, including asylum-seekers, in the name of national security. The separation of parents from their children that has resulted in many cases has led to a nationwide outcry and a recognition that we need to re-examine how we treat immigrants in detention, particularly families.

The Department of Homeland Security’s replacement of the so-called “catch and release” policy with “catch and return” has resulted in a significant rise in the number of families detained, even those with very young children, for indefinite periods of time, in some cases in prison-like conditions.

When the Department of Homeland Security opened the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, in May 2006, it proudly proclaimed the former prison as a new model for the increased detention of immigrant families. DHS claimed the new facility was “specially equipped to meet family needs” and would put an end to the separation of families in detention, which advocates had decried for years.

They didn’t quite get it right. When the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service visited Hutto in December, we found that the families held there were treated like criminals.

They lived in cells, complete with open-air toilets, had no privacy, had highly restricted mobility and only an hour of recreation per day, had poor medical care and no prenatal care, and were subject to questionable disciplinary tactics, including threats of separation of children from their parents.

Children had no soft toys and inappropriately received only an hour of education a day — high school-age children were being taught when a child should be toilet trained. (We’ve been told by DHS that education has since increased to 7 hours a day, but the quality is still unclear).

Perhaps the clearest indication of how bad things were at Hutto was when a child secretly slipped a note that said, “Help us and ask us questions,” into the hand of an outside visitor.

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