Urge ICE to Stop Detaining Pregnant Women in Family Detention Facilities

McClatchyDC recently reported that several of the women being held in family detention in Karnes City, Texas, are pregnant. The women learned about their pregnancies after being given a urine test soon after being detained, and one of the women stated that she had not received any off-site medical care for her pregnancy. This detention directly contradicts the Fall 2014 DHS memorandum outlining enforcement priorities for ICE.

The two family detention facilities in Texas were newly constructed as part of the Obama administration's aggressive response to last year’s surge of migrant families fleeing poverty and violence in Central America. Mothers and children are being detained in these jail-like facilities.

The article states that Joanne Lin, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said she thinks the detention of mothers violated policy guidelines issued by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. In a November 2014 memorandum, Johnson said that “absent extraordinary circumstances,” field agents should not detain pregnant mothers and primary caretakers of children.

I have personally dealt with clients who were detained by ICE in Texas, transferred to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York where I regularly visit and represent clients in the Batavia Immigration Court. I have had clients who were granted prosecutorial discretion by ICE in Buffalo, New York after Borowski Law made written requests. These clients then returned to their families in Texas only to be again detained by Texas ICE, without regard for the decision made by the very same agency's other field office to release the non-citizen on parole or on bond. Our office has been told, flat-out, by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers in Texas that they will take enforcement actions that directly contradict the Fall 2014 Johnson memorandum.  Our advice moving forward to all of our clients will be to "stay out of Texas."

This advice, of course, is of no help to the roughly 760 mothers and children being held at the "family detention centers," two of which are in Texas and one of which is in Berks County, Pennsylvania.

We must mobilize and ask the Obama administration to take action to end family detention now.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/03/268723/pregnant-women-among-the-locked.html?utm_source=AILA+Mailing&utm_campaign=19bc12f510-AILA8_6_4_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3c0e619096-19bc12f510-291612341#storylink=cpy

 

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/06/03/268723/pregnant-women-among-the-locked.html?utm_source=AILA+Mailing&utm_campaign=19bc12f510-AILA8_6_4_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3c0e619096-19bc12f510-291612341#storylink=cpy