Detaining Families

Critiqued family detention center opens its doors

By LISA FALKENBERG
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

TAYLOR — Painted sunflowers bloomed on the cinderblock. Teddy bears smiled from metal bunk beds in the cells. Slides and swings adorned a small playground rimmed in razor wire.

At the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, shown to the media Friday for the first time since it opened nine months ago, images of childhood were juxtaposed against the cavern-cold feel of a former prison. It's a place where standard-issue navy detention uniforms come in infant onesies.

The Hutto Center, built as a correctional center for adults, is now one of only two facilities in the country at which immigrant parents and children seeking asylum or facing deportation are detained, at a cost of $2.8 million a month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials who led the tour said.

"We've been historically criticized for breaking families apart," said Gary Mead, ICE assistant director for detention and removal operations in Washington, D.C. "We feel this is a humane approach for keeping families together."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the immigration department abandoned its "catch and release" method of handling immigrant families from countries other than Mexico, largely because most immigrants failed to report to their court hearings.

Human rights groups say that Hutto, operated by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America, is no place for children. Detainees have complained of poor food, lagging medical attention, substandard education and a sharply structured penal-like environment that Congress has specifically advised against where children are concerned. ...

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