May, 14 2015, 02:00pm EDT
Texas Advocates Throw Cold Water on ICE's Promises to 'Fix Family Detention'
Federal officials say they’ll try harder ahead of a legal decision that many think is likely to dismantle the policy of detaining refugee families
WASHINGTON
Texas immigration advocates and attorneys today derided an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)'s announcement that it will "enhance oversight" at the notorious detention camps in Texas and Pennsylvania for asylum-seeking families.
Since last summer, momentum has been building to end the detention of immigrant mothers and children in secure facilities in Karnes City, Texas; Dilley, Texas; and Berks County, Pennsylvania. In July 2014 more than 100 faith, immigrant rights, and civil rights and civil liberties organizations sent a letter calling on Homeland Security officials to reconsider plans to put families and children into prison-like detention centers. On May 2, more than 500 people shut down Texas Highway 85 as they marched to the Dilley, Texas family detention camp to protest the policy of locking up refugee women and children and call for the closure of all family detention camps. Most recently, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement on May 11, calling for a transformation of the immigrant detention system, including an end the use of detention for vulnerable groups including families and asylum seekers. The Bishops statement followed an outpouring of opposition to family detention from many faith organizations.
Important strides have been made on the legal front as well. Most recently, at the end of April 2015, a federal judge issued a preliminary decision to enforce the 1997 Flores settlement, which set standards for the care of children in INS custody. The 1997 settlement states clearly that children must be held in open, licensed childcare facilities and have the right to released first to their parents. Many observers believe that if the Flores settlement were fully enforced, it would dismantle the entire system of immigrant family detention in secure facilities operated by for-profit prison corporations. Parties are currently in the process of negotiating a settlement based on the judge's preliminary decision and a final negotiation is scheduled for the end of this month.
Advocates in Texas roundly rejected the notion that the family detention camps can be improved and instead reiterated their call for the immediate closure of the for-profit facilities in Karnes City and Dilley, Texas as well as the one in Berk County, Pennsylvania.
"While families and little children suffer in these detention camps, private prison corporations are profiting from every bed and every crib," said Bob Libal, executive director of Grassroots Leadership in Austin. "Family detention cannot be 'fixed.' The only fix is to end the policy of locking up families and children, to close the detention camps permanently, and to never again return to this shameful policy."
Texans United for Families, the community group that organized the massive protest in Dilley, Texas on May 2, remains committed to seeing family detention ended for good.
"All detention is immoral and should be illegal. Perhaps seeing children held against their will, prohibited from leaving an enclosed facility, is the most glaring and sobering form of this imprisonment. "Enhancing oversight" is the equivalent of condoning the existence of detention centers and reveals a focus on the wrong issues," said Rakhi Agrawal, Texans United for Families member.
Astrid Dominguez, Advocacy Coordinator of the ACLU of Texas said, "The fact remains that detaining vulnerable children and their mothers in federal detention centers is simply wrong and inhumane. These are women and children who are fleeing unspeakable violence and trauma, yet we continue to lock them up despite clear evidence that jail conditions profoundly harm children and all survivors of violence. The only right thing for the government to do is close these facilities and invest in the far less costly alternatives that exist."
Attorneys who have seen the conditions in family detention first hand for many months, joined advocates in their assertions that detention cannot be made more palatable with tweaks of administrative policy. They too, say that closing the camps is the only answer.
"Locking up refugee children is immoral, unconscionable, unconstitutional, and unwise. Every credible psychologist, social worker, and social science researcher knows that detention causes severe damage to children, damage that is long-lasting and likely permanent. You cannot "fix" family detention; you cannot make it pretty or nice or tolerable. Family detention must end," said Virginia Raymond, an Austin-based attorney who has been representing several families at Karnes.
Professor Barbara Hines, attorney, retired law professor and the former director of the University of Texas at Austin School of Law Immigration Clinic, added, "Now that ICE has abandoned its ill-thought and illegal use of deterrence as a pretext to lock up mothers and children, it should release families immediately as there is no reason to detain asylum seekers. ICE's press release is merely a post-hoc litigation stance in light of the Flores litigation. Nothing in their press release would put ICE in compliance with the requirements of the Flores settlement that requires that children be held in nonsecure, state-licensed facilities and that they be released as quickly as possible. ICE facilities are not safe and humane. In fact, it is clear based on my experience at the Karnes detention center and the abuses that have occurred there, that there is no humane or moral way to lock up families in for-profit detention facilities. ICE has ignored stakeholders before and during the almost one year of this shameful practice of locking up families. I do not think that ICE is sincerely interested in engaging with advocates to end family detention."
A group of women who have been on multiple hunger strikes inside Karnes to protest their lengthy detention sent a letter to President Obama early this week where they explained why detention itself is so harmful to them and their young children.
"We have cases of reasonable or credible fear. We do not feel that we are in conditions to be able to do our final case hearings while we are locked up because we are in poor mental health. We suffer from constant headaches, we can't sleep for thinking about so many problems. For these reasons, many mothers loose [sic] when they go to their final hearing with the judge. Our children don't eat, they don't want to go to school, and they feel bad when they see hundreds of families come and go from this detention center. What worries us the most is that the [sic] say that they are going to throw themselves off the top of the building because they won't let us leave. Other adolescents say that they prefer to tie a sheet around their necks and kill themselves because they no longer want to be detained here. We come fleeing from violence in our home countries, seeking refuge and protection here, but we never thought that they were going to treat us like this. We have been despised, humiliated, deceived, and rejected," they wrote.
At Grassroots Leadership, we believe no one should profit from the imprisonment of human beings. We live in the most incarcerated society in the history of the world. Every day we confront a prison industry that preys on pain because our addiction to locking people up dehumanizes all of us.
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"He does not care about anybody in this world except Donald Trump," said the president of North America's Building Trades Unions. "His dark side is very, very dark."
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The leadership of a union that represents more than 3 million building trades workers in the U.S. and Canada endorsed President Joe Biden's reelection bid on Wednesday, slamming presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump for catering to the needs of billionaires like himself during his first four years in the White House.
"When Trump was elected, we took him at his word that he would have a worker-centered agenda and deliver on long-stalled issues such as infrastructure investment," said Sean McGarvey, president of North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU), whose governing board voted to endorse Biden on Tuesday.
"Instead of delivering," McGarvey added, Trump "aligned himself with his billionaire buddies to enact tax cuts that raised costs for our members. Simply put, he failed to deliver. Given our experience and knowing his track record, the choice is clear."
Building trades unions and their rank-and-file members are generally seen as more conservative and pro-Trump than other elements of the U.S. labor movement. In 2017, McGarvey celebrated Trump's effort to advance construction work on the Keystone XL pipeline, a massive fossil fuel project that Biden effectively killed in 2021 after years of organizing by environmentalists and Indigenous tribes.
But NABTU's leadership endorsed Clinton over Trump in the 2016 presidential election and Biden over Trump in 2020.
In a five-minute ad released Wednesday, the union highlights Trump's pledge to be a dictator on "day one" and condemns the former president as a dangerous egomaniac.
NABTU called for Trump's resignation after the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
"Donald Trump, he's not a good man. He's not a good person. He does not care about anybody in this world except Donald Trump," McGarvey says in the new ad. "His dark side is very, very dark."
Wow. You may have seen a short version of the North America Building Trade Union ( @NABTU) video endorsement of Biden. The full video is incredible and absolutely devastating for Trump. They did not hold back. A must watch till the end. pic.twitter.com/stL7b7JazP
— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) April 24, 2024
In his statement Wednesday announcing NABTU's endorsement, McGarvey cites the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Chips and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act as key legislative achievements that "brought life-changing, opportunity-creating, generational change focused on the working men and women of this great country who have for far too long been clamoring for a leader to finally keep their word."
"In the coming months," he added, "we will continue to engage our membership and their families directly, member to member, door to door, and jobsite to jobsite, with an unprecedented field program in key battleground states, to tell them how important President Biden and his policies have been to them, their economic security, and their freedoms."
But McGarvey said in an appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Wednesday that the union does not intend to "waste a lot of time talking to every American that supports Donald Trump" or "some of our members that support Donald Trump, because we're not gonna change their minds."
Speaking at NABTU's annual legislative conference on Wednesday, Biden welcomed the union's endorsement and said that "Donald Trump's vision of America is one of revenge and retribution, a defeated former president who sees the world from Mar-a-Lago, who bows down to billionaires and looks down on union workers."
NABTU is the latest major union to back Biden as he prepares for his high-stakes rematch with Trump in November. In January, Biden secured the support of the emboldened United Auto Workers, whose president called Trump a "scab" who "stands against everything we stand for as a union."
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A Democratic leader in the Tennessee House on Tuesday warned that a bill pushed through by Republicans to permit teachers to carry concealed handguns was "nothing but a bad disaster and tragedy waiting to happen," after the GOP cut off a debate and refused to include amendments that aimed to add safety measures to the legislation.
House Bill 1202 passed in a 68-28 vote, and Republican Gov. Bill Lee, who has never vetoed legislation, is expected to sign it, clearing the way for the state to require school districts to allow teachers to carry firearms without notifying students' parents.
According toThe Tennessean, the legislation does not allow schools or school districts to opt out of the program and requires administrators "to consider every individual who wants to carry."
The legislation was passed just over a year after a shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville killed six people, including three children.
"Our children's lives are at stake," said House Democratic Caucus Chair John Ray Clemmons (D-55).
After last year's shooting, the Tennessee Legislature garnered national attention when Republicans voted to expel expel state Reps. Justin Jones (D-52) and Justin Pearson (D-86) for joining outraged students in a chant for gun control during a protest. Jones and Pearson were soon reinstated.
Following Tuesday's vote on arming teachers, Republicans voted to bar Jones from speaking in House proceedings for two days after he was accused of committing three rules violations, including recording on the chamber's floor—something a GOP member was also accused of doing.
Jones applauded Tennessee residents for speaking out against H.B. 1202 in the House chamber.
"Despite my Republican colleagues' best effort, the power of the people cannot and will not be stopped," said the lawmaker.
The GOP ended the debate over the legislation after one teacher, Lauren Shipman-Dorrance, cried out from the viewing section. Shipman-Dorrance was removed by state troopers on orders from House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R-25).
After the bill passed overwhelmingly—despite four Republicans who joined the Democrats and three who abstained—the remaining protesters chanted, "Blood on your hands!" before the GOP ordered state troopers to remove them.
Sarah Shoop Neumann, whose children attend Covenant Day School, delivered a letter with more than 5,300 signatures to the House on Monday demanding that lawmakers defeat the bill and warning that the legislation "ignores research that shows the presence of a gun increases the risks posed to children."
Shoop Neumann toldThe Tennessean that the bill's passage was "disgraceful."
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Kris Brown, president of gun violence prevention group Brady, pointed out that "multiple teachers were armed at [the Covenant School], yet that was not enough to stop six children and school employees from being murdered."
"The Tennessee Legislature has just dishonored all who were killed at the Covenant School shooting last year by choosing to promote the proliferation of firearms in classrooms," said Brown. "H.B. 1202 is especially egregious as it has no safe storage requirements, meaning firearms could potentially fall into a child's hands."
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Less than a month after a key abortion pill hearing, the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments for another major reproductive rights case—one out of Idaho that could impact healthcare for pregnant women and people across the country.
Idaho is among the over 20 states that have tightened restrictions on abortion since the high court's right-wing majority reversedRoe v. Wade nearly two years ago with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Since August 2022, abortions have been banned in the state except for reported cases of rape or incest or when "necessary to prevent the death" of the pregnant person.
"If the court does not uphold emergency abortion care protections, this ruling will have devastating consequences for pregnant people."
Before Idaho's near-total ban on abortion took effect, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill barred enforcement of it to the extent that it conflicts with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), a 1986 federal law requiring emergency departments that accept Medicare to provide "necessary stabilizing treatment" to any patient with an emergency medical condition.
The Biden administration argues that such care includes abortion; Idaho's Republican policymakers—backed by the far-right Christian Alliance Defending Freedom—disagree. The U.S. Supreme Court in January paused Winmill's order and agreed to hear arguments in Moyle v. United States and Idaho v. United States.
As The New York Timesreported Wednesday:
In a lively argument, questions by the justices suggested a divide along ideological lines, as well as a possible split by gender on the court. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, appeared skeptical that Idaho's law, which bars doctors from providing abortions unless a woman's life is in danger or in specific nonviable pregnancies, superseded the federal law.
The argument also raised a broader question about whether some of the conservative justices, particularly Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., may be prepared to embrace language of fetal personhood, that is, the notion that a fetus would have the same rights as a pregnant woman.
Also noting Barrett's apparent alignment with the three liberal women on the court, Law Dork's Chris Geidner predicted "it comes down to" Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow right-winger Brett Kavanaugh.
"Already, we see women miscarrying and giving birth to stillborn infants in restrooms and in their cars after hospitals have turned them away, and medical professionals put in impossible positions by extremist lawmakers," said MomsRising executive director and CEO Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner, citing Associated Pressreporting from last week.
"Of all the horrors SCOTUS unleashed with its appalling, dangerous, massively unpopular ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, the threat that pregnant people—most of whom are moms—will be denied emergency medical care is among the worst," she asserted. "An adverse ruling in this case will mean emergency rooms can deny urgently needed care to people experiencing serious pregnancy complications that can destroy their health, end their fertility, and take their lives."
Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, deputy director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, similarly stressed that under a decision that favors the Idaho GOP, "pregnant people will suffer severe, life-altering health consequences, and even death."
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The has also been an exodus of healthcare providers. Pointing out that those who violate Idaho's ban face five years in prison, The Guardianreported Wednesday that "between 2022, when Roe was overturned, and 2023, about 50 OB-GYNs moved out of the state."
As Republican lawmakers in various states have ramped up attacks on reproductive freedom since Dobbs, states that still allow abortions have seen an influx of "healthcare refugees." A Planned Parenthood spokesperson confirmed in January that about 30% of its abortion patients in Nevada—which borders Idaho—are from other states.
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If the high court rules in favor of Idaho's Republican lawmakers, she warned, "all states will be impacted, even in places like Nevada with more than 4 in 5 voters supporting reproductive freedom."
Destiny Lopez, acting co-CEO of the Guttmacher Institute, declared that "at its core, this Supreme Court decision will reflect who we are becoming as a society: Are we okay with requiring pregnant individuals who face severe complications to suffer life-threatening health consequences rather than granting them access to abortion? Are we okay with forcing doctors to choose between violating federal law by not providing emergency abortion care or violating state law if they do?"
"If the court does not uphold emergency abortion care protections, this ruling will have devastating consequences for pregnant people—particularly Black and Brown folks, immigrants, people with lower incomes, those without health insurance, and LGBTQ+ communities—while further emboldening extremists," she emphasized.
Arguments in the case have sparked multiple demonstrations, from a weekend rally in Boise, Idaho to a Wednesday gathering outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., where Women's March organized a die-in to highlight the potential consequences of the forthcoming ruling.
"It's a horrifying time to be someone who needs critical abortion care in America right now," said Women's March executive director Rachel O'Leary Carmona. "The GOP is chipping away at women's bodily autonomy and livelihoods one illegitimate court case at a time—from fast-tracking a case on the authorization of a medication that's been safely administered for decades last month, to now bringing the fate of emergency abortion care to a Supreme Court captured by their radical, anti-choice agenda."
"We know what these cases really are: They're part of a series of efforts by Christian nationalist politicians to do anything they can to control women's bodies and cut back women's decisions about their healthcare, their family planning, and their lives," she added.
Similar warnings about far-right Christian nationalist attacks on a range of rights have dominated political contests this cycle—including the race for the White House. In November, Democratic President Joe Biden, who supports access to abortion care, is set to face former Republican President Donald Trump, who brags about appointing three of the six justices who reversed Roe.
The case has renewed arguments for considering changes to the country's top court, which over the past few years has not only seen plummeting levels of public trust but also been rocked by repeated ethics scandals.
"Idaho's abortion ban is a direct consequence of the court's radical decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and allow partisan state legislatures to determine Americans' access to abortion care," said Stand Up America managing director of policy and political affairs Brett Edkins. "If the Supreme Court once again sides with anti-abortion extremists, it will be further proof that this court is radically out of touch with the American people and must be reformed."
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