New York Times (Editorial)
August 5, 2015
Children
do not belong in prison. The mass detention of families offends
American values, a lesson this country learned long ago at Manzanar,
Tule Lake, Heart Mountain
and the other Japanese-American internment camps of World War II.
Learned,
but apparently forgotten by the Obama administration, which has just
been ordered by a federal judge to release several hundred women and
children locked up in
its immigration detention centers in southern Texas. The centers, in
Dilley and Karnes City, were thrown up hastily last year to contain a
surge of families and unaccompanied children from Central America, many
desperately seeking refuge from gang and drug
and political violence at home.
In
a sharply critical ruling on July 24, Judge Dolly Gee of the Federal
District Court in Los Angeles found that the administration was
violating a 1997 court settlement
of a lawsuit involving the care and treatment of children in
immigration detention. That settlement, Flores v. Reno, requires the
government to hold children in the least-restrictive settings
appropriate to their ages and needs, in places licensed to care
for children, and to release them without needless delay to their
parents or other adult relatives whenever possible.
The
judge found it starkly evident that the filthy, freezing holding cells
of the Border Patrol, and the unlicensed lockups in Texas where families
languished for weeks
and months, distraught and anxious, did not meet those legal
obligations.
The
administration says it has made great progress in improving conditions
at the Karnes and Dilley centers. But clean, tidy prisons are still
prisons. The judge gave
the administration until Thursday to respond to her order. The Homeland
Security Department should accept the opportunity to do the right
thing: Close the detention centers and open the courtrooms. Find
adequate shelter and care, and lawyers and community
support, for the children and mothers. Release them on their own
recognizance or on affordable bond, using ankle bracelets only as an
extreme step.
The
country has more than enough money for catching, imprisoning and
deporting immigrants. Private prison companies like the ones that run
Karnes and Dilley are profiting
richly from the enforcement regime. But there never seems to be enough
money for justice and values.
The
administration worries about detainees absconding — even though a
majority of families do show up again in court, and families who have
lawyers overwhelmingly honor
their obligations. Immigration courts, meanwhile, are underfunded and
overwhelmed, and asylum seekers wait many months or years to have their
cases resolved. These deficiencies make a mockery of America’s claims to
be a haven for refugees.
Through
all this, the immigrant tide at the border has sharply receded from
last year. The administration’s fears about the embarrassment of another
border surge have
not. But political anxieties have to be weighed against real human
suffering, and the United States’ obligations under the Flores case and
to asylum seekers under international law.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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