The Trump administration has resumed family detention of immigrants, a legal nonprofit said, reigniting a controversial practice largely curtailed under the Biden administration.
Fourteen families with children as young as 1 year old are being held in a detention facility in Karnes County, Texas, outside of San Antonio, according to the nonprofit group RAICES, which has been in contact with the families.
NewsNation reported last week that the Trump administration was preparing to open two family detention centers, with a facility in Karnes County being reconfigured for families.
Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement immediately responded to The Hill’s request for comment Thursday.
Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer for RAICES, said the families being held are not just those who have recently crossed the southern border.
“From what we know right now, there’s evidence of apprehensions from the northern border, from Canada. Also strong indications of interior enforcement, so families being swept up in some type of action across the United States and being brought into Karnes,” he said.
Others held in the facility, he said, had a credible fear interview 10 years ago, suggesting they have been in the U.S. for some time.
The families currently held in detention are originally from Colombia, Romania, Iran, Angola, Russia, Armenia, Turkey and Brazil.
Plans to resume the practice were condemned by immigrant advocates, who stressed the mental toll on children as well as their parents.
“For years we worked to expose the horrific conditions inside immigration jails, where vulnerable children and their parents suffered irreversible mental and physical health impacts, lasting trauma, medical neglect, and other horrifying documented abuses,” Robyn Barnard, senior director of refugee advocacy at Human Rights First, said in a statement.
“This revival of family detention ignores the clear warnings of medical professionals, human rights advocates, and even the government’s own experts—and it is absolutely shameful. We will not stand by as families are once again subjected to these horrific abuses.”
The government does have to meet certain obligations under the 1997 Flores Settlement when detailing children, including releasing them within 20 days.
