Department of homeland security releases
FIRST-EVER FAMILY DETENTION STANDARDS
Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children Issues Statement, Jan.
11, 2008
"We commend the Department of Homeland Security for drafting standards that will improve these facilities," says Michelle Brané, director of detention and asylum program. "However, we continue to be concerned with many provisions of the standards, particularly that they allow children to be disciplined based on adult prison protocol, including the use of restraints, steel batons and strip searches."
Read our press
release 
T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas.
Photo by Michelle Brané/Women's
Commission
Read media coverage
The New Yorker "The Lost Children: What Do Tougher Detention Policies Mean for Illegal Immigrant Families?" by Margaret Talbot (March 3, 2008)
Austin American-Statesman "Government posts
new standards for treatment
of immigrant families held in detention centers" by
Juan Castillo (January 12, 2008)
The Star-Telegram (Texas) "Advocates want to continue modifying family detention rules" by Anabelle Garay (AP) (January 14, 2008)
The Houston Chronicle
KVIA (New Mexico ABC affiliate)
Find out more
The standards will be implemented initially at the T. Don Hutto Residential
Center in Taylor, Texas, and the Berks Country Family Residential center in
Pennsylvania. The Women's Commission's February 2007 report, Locking
Up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families, highlighted
the lack of standards and recommended that appropriate standards be developed
and implemented.
Read the report
The Women's Commission recently testified before the Inter-American Commission
on Human Rights on U.S. detention of immigrants and asylum speakers, discussing
how the government's detention and deportation practices violate the human
rights of immigrants in America.
Read more
Read about the ACLU's lawsuit that led to improved conditions at the Hutto detention center.
Watch America's Family Prison, a short film on the T. Don Hutto facility documenting families in detention there. 17 min.
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