September 13, 2019
Senators argue that the privately-run facility has a history of poor conditions and over-crowding and should not be reopened
Senators Warren and Merkley Letter to HHS Raises Concerns about Reopening Migrant Child Detention Center and Conditions for Children
Senators argue that the privately-run facility has a history of poor conditions and over-crowding and should not be reopened
Washington, DC - United States Senators
Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) sent a letter to the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar amid reports
that while the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children
(Homestead) is no longer being used to detain migrant children, it may be used
for that purpose again, despite its history of overcrowding and poor conditions.
Homestead is the nation’s largest detention center for migrant children. The
senators also seek information about where children previously detained at
Homestead were relocated and all potential future uses of the facility. In March 2018, HHS reopened Homestead “without public
notice” to house child migrants, ages 13–17, who were unaccompanied by, or
separated from, their parents. Homestead, the only for-profit facility for
migrant children, is operated by Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. (CHSi), a
subsidiary of Caliburn International, a private security consulting firm that
operates private prisons. Although federal law requires unaccompanied children
to be “promptly placed in the least restrictive setting that is in the best
interest of the child,” a population census from June 2019 showed that
Homestead had kept more than 800 children longer than 30 days, including
several who had been there for nearly four months. Numerous reports also emerged of the despicable conditions
that thousands of children were forced to endure at Homestead. Amnesty
International issued a report based on two visits to the facility, one in April
2019 and one in July 2019, recounting conditions that “fail[ed] to meet
international obligations and the standards set out in US law.” According to
the report, children were held in a “highly restrictive setting”; required to
“wear bar codes”; were housed in rooms with 12 beds but only one toilet and
shower and no door for privacy; and were subject to “insufficient language
services, inappropriate remote case-management services, potentially inadequate
educational services, and an inadequate system to report allegations of sexual
abuse.” After nearly a year and a half of subjecting children to
poor conditions, HHS announced on August 3, 2019 that all minors had been moved
from the Homestead facility. HHS did not provide information about the specific
facilities or other locations to which these children have been sent. In
addition, despite initial reports that Homestead would be shut down, it also
appears that HHS may be gearing up to detain migrants at the facility again.
The potential reopening of Homestead is particularly concerning given the Trump
Administration’s recently unveiled regulation that would replace the Flores Settlement Agreement, which has
governed the detention of unaccompanied migrant children since 1997, and allow
for the indefinite detention of migrant families. “It would be wrong to re-open a privately run facility with
a history of poor conditions and over-crowding, and we urge you not to do so,” urged and concluded the senators. The
senators have requested responses to questions laid out in their letter no
later than September 26, 2019. Senator Warren has taken a number of recent actions to hold
immigration authorities accountable:
- She
led colleagues in sending
a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and HHS regarding
the decision not to vaccinate families in U.S. Customs and Border Protection
(CBP) detention ahead of flu season and argued that the decision threatens
the health of detainees, CBP personnel, and others;
- Along
with Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Representatives Ayanna Pressley
(D-Mass.), Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Lou Correa (D-Calif.), and Mark DeSaulnier
(D-Calif.), Senator Warren led
a letter to Acting DHS Secretary McAleenan and Acting U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Matthew T. Albence
demanding answers on ICE’s decision to end consideration of non-military
deferred action requests, including medical deferred action. More than 100
colleagues joined this letter;
- She
and Senator Markey, together with Representative Pressley, sent a letter to
Ken Cuccinelli, Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS), expressing their strong opposition to the agency's
decision to indefinitely suspend new asylum interviews in the Boston
Asylum Sub-Office and re-assign staff to the southern border. She also condemned the
decision in a statement;
- She wrote to
the DHS Inspector General (IG) requesting an investigation into the
unwarranted detention of American citizens by immigration authorities, and
into the policies and procedures in place at ICE and CBP to prevent such
detentions;
- She
sent a letter to
the DHS IG requesting an investigation into the use of solitary
confinement to force participation in "voluntary" work programs,
and another letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission requesting an
investigation of whether a private prison contractor violated securities
laws in their statements about lawsuits regarding these programs;
- She
sent a letter to
ICE expressing concern and requesting information regarding the agency’s
reported misuse of solitary confinement at detention facilities;
- She
sent an oversight letter to
ICE regarding reports that ICE has secretly transferred migrants to three
new for-profit detention facilities;
- She joined Senator
Brian Schatz (D-Hawai'i) in calling for the federal government
to investigate federal contractors in charge of migrant children detained
after crossing the U.S. southern border;
- She
and Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) investigated former
White House Chief of Staff General John Kelly's “cynical” and “unethical”
decision to join the board of directors of the federal contractor Caliburn
International, which runs the nation's largest detention center for
migrant children;
- She
sent letters to
private prison operators, DHS, the Bureau of Prisons, and the American
Correctional Association regarding the accreditation of private prison and
immigration detention facilities;
- Following
reports that two additional children had died in the custody of CBP,
Senator Warren sent a letter demanding
answers about conditions that lead to the deaths of five children in the
span of six months;
- She called for
an IG investigation into reports DHS used an intelligence firm's
surveillance of Trump Administration family separation policy protests;
- She questioned GEO
Group and CoreCivic about their compliance with federal immigration
detention standards following a DHS IG report about unsafe conditions and
mistreatment of immigrants at a number of privately-run immigration
detention centers;
- She
sent a letter to
Nakamoto Group asking them a series of questions about the thoroughness of
their inspections of immigration detention facilities following a DHS IG
report about their inadequacy;
- In
April of this year, she released the
prison companies’ responses, which revealed that neither the companies nor
their private auditor have taken responsibility for egregious failures
identified by the DHS IG, and also revealed an ongoing dispute between the
Nakamoto Group, the contractor responsible for auditing detention
facilities, and the IG about the quality of Nakamoto’s inspections; and
- She
led a letter to
DHS regarding reports that ICE was coordinating with USCIS to arrest,
detain, and deport individuals seeking to obtain legal immigration status.
###
Next Article Previous Article
