Isabela Dias
By Isabela Dias:
ICE Quietly Lowers (Already Low) Standards at Some Immigrant Detention Facilities
‘Baby Jails’ Chronicles America’s ‘Shameful’ Treatment of Migrant Kids
In his new book Baby Jails, author Philip Schrag reflects on the past and future of a threatened ruling that limits the detention of migrant children.
Philip G. Schrag has written more than a dozen books over his years as a lawyer and director of the asylum law clinic at Georgetown University. But his latest, Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children … Read More
Report: Sexual Assault is Common in Immigrant Prisons, but Survivors Aren’t Getting Help
Only three of 23 rape crisis centers serving areas where ICE detention centers are located reported providing therapy or other services to detainees.
We’ve known for a while that sexual assault is likely widespread in immigrant lockups. Adult detainees filed 1,224 sexual abuse complaints with the Department of Homeland Security between 2010 and September 2017. And in the past five years, thousands of … Read More
Activists Rally for the Closure of Hutto Detention Center as Private Contract Rumors Swirl
Former detainees were among those criticizing ICE's attempt to secure a 10-year private contract for the facility and two others in Texas.
Dozens of activists rallied outside the T. Don Hutto Residential Facility in Taylor on Saturday, denouncing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s push to secure long-term private contracts for detention centers in Texas. Among the protesters there to support the 512 women … Read More
When ICE Emptied Out an All-Women Detention Center in Texas, Chaos Ensued
Women formerly detained in Karnes County Residential Center have been lost in the shuffle, facing moved or cancelled court dates, high bonds, and legal confusion.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced in September that it would turn a detention center just outside of San Antonio back into a family residential center “in the near future.” The Karnes County Residential Center, a private facility run by … Read More
The Fear—and Hope—of Living in Sanctuary
After fleeing domestic violence in Guatemala, I’ve been living inside a Texas church for the past four years. I’m exhausted, but I won’t stop fighting.
Hilda Ramirez is an asylum-seeker from Guatemala who came to the United States in 2014 after fleeing domestic violence. Ramirez and her son, Ivan, now 13, were detained for 11 months in ICE’s Karnes County Residential Center in South Texas. … Read More
If DACA Ends, It Would Be a ‘Catastrophe’ For Dreamers
As many as 700,000 people could be directly impacted by the end of the Obama-era program.
On June 15, 2012, Juan Carlos Cerda was installing a fan on the second-floor bedroom of a house in Preston Hollow, a wealthy neighborhood in north Dallas, when President Barack Obama appeared on television. Standing in the Rose Garden at … Read More
Author William Lopez on How Immigration Raids Inflict Long-Lasting Trauma
“There are 364 other days in the year when people’s lives are shaped by the possibility of deportation or a raid.”
On a cold Thursday morning in November 2013, Santiago (a pseudonym) was leaving his apartment on the top floor of an auto repair shop in Washtenaw County, Michigan, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him. Santiago would later be … Read More
Federal Judges Temporarily Block Public Charge Rule, but Public Health Worries Persist
In Texas, where 5.6 million people live in mixed-status families with at least one non-U.S. citizen, the chilling effect from the proposed rule is likely to exacerbate alarming trends.
Last month, Elizabeth Hasse, an immigration attorney with the Tahirih Justice Center in Houston, spoke to a client about renewing her work permit. Hasse had helped the woman secure temporary status years before under a provision in the Violence Against … Read More
