During a time when the political discourse surrounding illegal immigration is tense, Federal Judge Dolly Gee has ruled in Los Angeles that minors detained in three facilities – two in Texas and a smaller one in Pennsylvania – be released without unnecessary delays. Gee also demanded that mothers of the children also be released when possible.
The immigrant families affected by Judge Gee’s decision are those who have illegally crossed the US-Mexico border. Gee reasoned that the detention of children for such crimes is a violation of a 1997 class-action settlement that mandated how youths who crossed into the country illegally were to be handled. The U.S. side argued that the terms of this settlement should not be in effect, due to the recent large influx of undocumented immigrants.
President of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law Peter Schey noted, according to Voice of America, that Gee’s ruling protects minors “from lengthy and entirely senseless detention by the Department of Homeland Security in unsafe adult lockdown facilities run by private corporations raking in millions of dollars in profits.” Schey also said that these detention centers have “caused thousands of innocent children to needlessly suffer severe psychological and often physical harm.”
(The detention centers have) caused thousands of innocent children to needlessly suffer severe psychological and often physical harm.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been given until October 23 to comply with Judge Gee’s decision, reported The Guardian. Gee criticized the DHS for dragging their feet when it comes to matters of treating young immigrants humanely. She called the detention centers “deplorable” and scorned them for their bad sanitation and safety conditions.
In recent years, tens of thousands of illegal immigrant family members are caught at the border annually. In the past year, numbers of people caught on the border have dropped, which authorities say is a result of better enforcement on both the U.S. and Mexico sides. The DHS claims that Gee’s ruling could provide incentive for even larger numbers of immigrants to illegally cross into the country, but Gee calls these assertions acts of fear-mongering.
