The Biden administration is continuing plans to phase out long-term detention of migrant families, according to documents filed in federal court late Friday, although advocates are concerned that the policy change will not be permanent.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) oversees three detention centers designed to hold migrant parents and children in deportation proceedings: two Texas facilities run by for-profit prison companies and a smaller one run by officials in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Collectively, the facilities have beds for more than 3,300 parents and children, but the Biden government’s new plan would discontinue their use as long-term family detention centers – at least temporarily.
In documents filed with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, ICE said it planned to convert the Berks County family detention center into an adults-only facility. ICE also announced that Texas detention centers in Dilley and Karnes City would transition to short-term processing facilities designed to hold migrant families for less than three days.
The legal service providers representing migrant parents and children held in these facilities said that all of their clients had been released in recent days, but the groups had not yet received advice on why that happened.
On Friday, ICE said only 13 families were in custody as of earlier this week, noting that they would all be released on Sunday as long as they tested negative for the coronavirus.
“ICE would like to note that it is reviewing its current attitude towards family detention in the (family detention centers) to allow for a wider re-use of the physical facilities to better meet operational needs,” the agency said in the declaration at the court.
ICE did not respond to requests for comment on Friday’s lawsuits. The plan to convert Texas family detention centers into high-speed processing facilities was first reported by the San Antonio Express-News.
Andrea Meza, an immigration attorney at the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, the main legal services provider for families held at the Karnes City facility, expressed concern that the Biden administration’s plans may not be sustainable appear to be.
“ The changes in Karnes and Dilley’s family prisons are at best reversible operational changes that reduce the damage of long-term detention, and at worst a temporary step to quell concerns about this controversial immigration policy that will be reversed with anti -immigrant policy. political pressure, ”Meza told CBS News, referring to family detention.
Meza also criticized the U.S. government for continuing to use a public health authority enlisted by the Trump administration last spring to quickly expel most migrant adults and families to Mexico or their homelands without allowing them to seek humanitarian refuge.
While it protected unaccompanied minors from the swift evictions, the Biden administration has said repeatedly that it will maintain the policy known as Title 42 of expelling most border crossers until it can handle the government’s capacity to process asylum seekers. to expand. Some families with young children have been released to South Texas where local officials are testing them for the coronavirus.
In January, US authorities detained more than 7,400 parents and children along the southern border – a 60% increase from December. According to government data, more than 4,700 of them have been expelled under the Trump-era public health order.
Advocates have long called for an end to detention for family migration, which child welfare experts have concluded is harmful to minors and their psychological well-being. A 2016 report commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security called for the practice to be discontinued.
The Obama administration drastically expanded the detention of parents and children in 2014, as the number of Central American families placed in US border custody boomed. The two current family detention facilities in Texas began holding families that year.
In response to a lawsuit filed by attorneys for detained migrant youth, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee ruled in 2015 that children detained with their parents were also entitled to the legal safeguards of the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement, which requires that the government is working on the release. of minors in custody.
Gee has also stipulated that, in general, minors should not be held for more than 20 days in secure facilities that are not licensed by states to house children. None of the three ICE family detention centers currently has permits from government agencies confirming that the facilities can care for children.
The Trump administration tried to detain migrant families for the duration of their asylum applications, proposing a rule in 2019 that would have scrapped the Flores Agreement and allow the administration to detain parents and children indefinitely. Gee made sure that that regulation did not come into effect.
President Biden’s campaign pledged to use alternative arrangements that would not require migrants to be detained, including the expansion of case management programs designed to ensure that asylum seekers attend their court appointments. Mr. Biden also called that children and parents were released from ICE detention together last summer.
Bridget Cambria, the executive director of Aldea – The People’s Justice Center, which has assisted families in the Berks County detention facility, said the Biden administration should not engage in the detention of parents and children, even for short periods. periods.
“You cannot continue to use facilities that were used to punish families because there is always the fear of going back,” Cambria told CBS News. “The facilities, all three, are secure, unlicensed detention facilities, so you have to ask if you’re using them for a period of time.”