A Personal Account of a Week Inside an Immigration Family Detention Center

• Publication year: 2016
• Author: By Deepali V. Lugani

A Personal Account of a Week Inside an Immigration Family Detention Center

By Deepali V. Lugani^*

Then there are adults who brought their children with them. Again, our message to this group is simple: we will send you back. We are building additional space to detain these groups and hold them until their expedited removal orders are effectuated. Last week we opened a detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico for this purpose, and we are building more detention space quickly.

Statement by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson before the Senate Committee on Appropriations. July 10, 2014.¹

I. BACKGROUND

A. A Crisis at the Border

In the summer of 2014, news media was on fire with pictures, reports and blog posts of children escaping Central America en masse and crossing the Southern border into the United States. As an immigration attorney and a new parent, I followed developments at the border closely. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) apprehended more than 20,000 unaccompanied minor children (under seventeen years old) in May and June of 2014, an increase of more than threefold from the previous two years.² CBP also apprehended almost 30,000 family units consisting of a minor child traveling with a parent or a legal guardian, an increase of almost tenfold from the previous two years.³ The majority of children and families were coming through Mexico into the Rio Grande Valley, often losing lives, limbs or a family member on the way.⁴

Over time, as much of the media shifted focus towards other news, I continued to follow the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) and the American Immigration Council (AIC) reports on what had been labeled as the surge of 2014 and a humanitarian crisis at our border. One oft-recurring explanation for the mass flight of Central American mothers and children was increased gang violence targeting children and families.⁵

In response, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees the CBP, immediately adopted a policy of deterrence.⁶ The DHS authorized CBP to increase the use of fast-track deportations through expedited removal proceedings and immigration detention centers for fast-track asylum hearings.⁷Pursuant to the Homeland Security Act of 2002, the DHS transferred custody of unaccompanied minor children to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).⁸ The family units were under the jurisdiction of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an arm of the DHS, and many of them were transferred to a newly created immigration detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico, with a capacity of 650 beds.⁹

B. Decision to Volunteer: One Year in the Making

My immigration law mailing lists buzzed with immigration advocates expressing bewilderment at the government's decision to deport and detain mothers and children seeking asylum in the United States. Attorneys from non-profit organizations and law firms, academics, law students and human rights advocates began traveling to Artesia to provide pro bono representation to detained mothers.¹⁰ AILA's former president Laura Lichter, who also volunteered, described Artesia as an internment camp.¹¹

In July 2014, I gave birth to my daughter ten weeks prematurely. Her delicate condition brought an abrupt halt to our lives. I spent long summer days at the Neonatal ICU at Stanford Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, watching images of children at the border on muted TV screens in the cafeteria. I read first-hand accounts of mothers' past persecution in Central America written by volunteer attorneys in Artesia who worked sixteen-hour days providing pro bono counsel. Though I knew it was not possible any time soon given my baby's frail health, I resolved to volunteer when she recovered satisfactorily. I wished to contribute my legal skills to assist other children in need. At that time, though, I was convinced that my resolution would become obsolete, that this humanitarian crisis would be averted and family detention centers soon gone.

I was wrong. Later that year, in December 2014, Artesia was permanently closed.¹² It was mired in controversies due to severe overcrowding, shortage of food, inadequate medical care and due process violations.¹³ However, by this time DHS had opened two new permanent family detention centers in Texas: Karnes Family Detention Center in Karnes with a capacity of 600 beds, and the South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC) in Dilley with a capacity of 2,400.¹⁴

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Next summer, as my daughter turned one, I read a statistic on AILA's family detention blog that sealed my decision to volunteer. Mothers in detention with access to pro bono counsel were found eligible to apply for asylum in over 90% of the cases, higher than the national average.¹⁵ That a few volunteer attorneys providing limited counsel made this outcome possible convinced me that my services would be useful. I arrived in Dilley on September 13, 2015.

II. GETTING TO KNOW CARA AND DILLEY

CARA, the family detention volunteer program, is a collaboration of four non-profit organizations: Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), American Immigration Council (AIC), Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), and American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA). Its raison d'etre is to provide pro bono representation to families in immigration detention and to advocate the end of family detention in the United States.¹⁶

CARA has several contract staff members working in Dilley at the STFRC (interchangeably referred to as "the detention facility"). STFRC is the largest immigration detention center in the country and detains mothers and children. Fathers and older male relatives that arrive with families are separated and detained elsewhere. At the time I arrived, the population in the detention facility was 1,900. Each week, volunteers arrived from all over the country to provide legal and non-legal assistance. First-time volunteers were required to arrive on a Sunday for a mandatory orientation and work in detention from Monday through Saturday. My group of twenty-seven volunteers was from Boston, New York, Kansas and Missouri, and included attorneys, interpreters, law students and a medical clinician. A majority of the attorneys came through firm sponsorships and groups organized by local AILA chapters. A professor and at least ten law students were from Columbia Law School's Immigrants' Rights Clinic. I was the only Californian and amongst the few travelling alone. The president of my local AILA Santa Clara Valley Chapter was very supportive of my trip and authorized a volunteer stipend that defrayed nearly half of my trip's cost.

Prior to the trip, AILA organizers had informed us that Dilley was a small town with an estimated population of 4,000. It had limited cafés and stores, and we were advised to carry snacks for the week. We received group rates at "the best motel in town." September temperatures in Dilley go as high as 105 degrees, and, to my surprise, we were warned to carry winter clothes. To combat the heat, the detention facility ran air conditioning so cold that coats became essential clothing.

I flew into San Antonio and rented a car for the week. The drive to Dilley was so nondescript it was as though I slept through the ride. It was an hour and half of Texan flatlands with nothing in sight, except every now and then a billboard appeared announcing a small town on the way. As I approached Dilley, there were no billboards. I figured Dilley was too small to warrant its own billboard.

After I checked into the motel, I had an hour to spare before orientation so I decided to explore the town. It was eerie, driving through Dilley. The town is a handful of roads on each side of a railroad track. Most were unpaved, lined by very modest homes. That Sunday evening, the town appeared empty, almost deserted. I looked for other moving vehicles on the streets, for people on sidewalks, children in yards. Everyone seemed to have gone, leaving behind scanty possessions. I drove past cafés with names I had read online, and most of them were street-side shacks, almost dilapidated. I couldn't tell if they were closed for the day or forever. I quickly returned to the motel, glad I had listened to the organizers and brought snacks for the week.

The orientation was at a ranch shared by the CARA staff, which consisted of two attorneys and a non-attorney program manager. There was also a full-time volunteer, a Spanish-speaking non-attorney who was self-funding her trip to provide administrative support to the CARA Project. All four were energetic, passionate and extremely devoted to the project. They let us know straight away that we had grueling schedules for the week. Each day, we would work in the detention facility from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and after an hour's break regroup from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. for a "Big Table Meeting" to discuss our day. During the week, the Big Table Meetings often ran overtime and it would be 10 p.m. by the time I returned to my room.

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The orientation included a primer on asylum law and legal procedures within detention, and provided a background on the detention facility. I learned that ICE had contracted its management to Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a publicly traded for-profit prison company, for $260 million per year.¹⁷ CCA is the largest private operator of prisons and immigration detention facilities in the nation.¹⁸

I also learned that Dilley was a legal dumping ground for wastewater from fracking, contaminated with chemicals, minerals and radioactive materials.¹⁹ Town residents had spotted illegal water-dumping in the past and were concerned about contamination of their public wells. CARA staff strongly advised all volunteers to drink bottled water for the week.

III. A WEB OF TRAILERS

On Monday morning, I arrived outside the detention facility promptly at 7 a.m. A group of twenty-seven volunteers was unusual for CARA and the CCA guards, who were accustomed to groups of ten to twenty. A...