Immigrant detention centers: an immoral deterrent

Wonkblog

In the aggregate, there hasn't been any success in slowing the number of people apprehended at the US southwest border. Homicide statistics have improved in Honduras and Guatemala. All three Northern Triangle countries have experienced positive economic growth, but not nearly early especially in El Salvador.

The US has stepped up warnings in the region, alerting people to the dangerous journey that awaits should they attempt the trek north. The US has set up some small-scale programs to assist people in applying for asylum while they are in their home country. And the US has announced a $750 million dollar assistance plan for the region. However, it does not appear that much of the money has been disbursed yet.

What these numbers don't capture are the number of people from the Northern Triangle stopped and deported while in Mexico. From all indications, the US has moved its border south to the US-Guatemala border.

What continues to be one of the most embarrassing issues for the US with regards to the increased number of Hondurans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans picked up at our border with Mexico is our treatment of these people in detention facilities.

Women say that staying in Dilley can be by turns frustrating and comfortable. The facility has basketball courts but almost no trees. It is divided into “neighborhoods” with names such as “Yellow Frog” and “Red Parrot,” but a single room can hold up to 12 people who are interrupted by middle-of-the-night bed checks. It has 24-hour medical care — but with wait times that can exceed five hours, according to former residents, and where nurses prescribe a mixture of water and honey for a wide variety of ailments.

The greatest criticism of the facility, according to lawyers and several former residents, is that staff members sometimes send both the mother and child to a “cold room” — a version of solitary confinement — when children misbehave. They can be held there for several hours.

Corrections Corporation of America, which operates the center, declined to answer questions about conditions at Dilley and said the facility was stocked with “state-of-the-art classrooms” and more than 25,000 library books.

There are reasons to detain people while they are being processed. However, we do not have to dehumanize those individuals. As story after story has demonstrated, many of those apprehended at the US border have suffered horrific ordeals. To re-traumatize these individuals should be beneath the US..