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Breaking! My latest: Five days after alerting officials that ICE was detaining an alarming number of infants under the age of 1 in Dilley, Texas, a coalition of immigrant rights advocates say 15 out of the 17 babies have been released with their mothers. rewire.news/article/2019/0…
“We remain alarmed that the government has demonstrated a willingness to detain such vulnerable individuals as a 5-month-old,” @shepherd_kt, national advocacy counsel for the Immigration Justice Campaign, told @Rewire_News. “I think it reflects total disregard for human life.”
Katy Murdza, advocacy coordinator for the Dilley Pro Bono Project, has long called the facility a “baby jail” but grew alarmed when she saw a detained mother holding a small baby. The child was far younger than those usually held in the facility run by CoreCivic.
She documented infants as young as 5-months-old at Dilley with their mothers for a complaint to @DHSOIG and Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties filed by @immcouncil @cliniclegal and the American Immigration Lawyers Association
Complaint: “We have grave concerns about the lack of specialized medical care available in Dilley for this vulnerable population.” Accompanying letter by @P4HR: “the inherent harms and health risks of child detention … are exacerbated in the case of infants and young children.”
Meanwhile @RAICESTEXAS says it has seen "more than two dozen clients held at the Karnes Detention Center in Texas in the last five months who are less than three years old; the majority are less than 18 months old, and two are just a year old."
“A lot families are coming out of holding cells at the border that are super cold,” said @ErikaAndiola, RAICES chief advocacy officer. “They are coming into detention with a lot of medical concerns and fevers, and some babies are just not getting treated with what they need.”
Updated with new comments from Katy Murdza, on the ground with the Dilley Pro Bono Project: While she confirmed 15 families with babies under the age of 1 have been released, she noted she had originally known of just 12 babies before ICE said it had counted 17...
...“which leaves 5 babies I didn’t know the names of that were somewhere in the detention center. I’m not sure how many of those babies were later identified by us, or how many are ones we still don’t have names for"...
...So technically several babies ICE mentioned could still be in the detention center, although we only know of one that we have identified.” Murdza added that pro bono lawyers are still “trying to do intake” for 170 new families that arrived over the weekend.
