12,800 Detained Migrant Children

12,800 migrant children in federal custody this month and the WH wants to make it legal to detain them indefinitely. Tell them NO!

12,800 migrant children were detained this month in federal custody – yes, 12,800! That’s up from 2,400 in May last year! And the WH just announced that they plan to triple the size of the "Tent City" in Tornillo to house even more - a total of around 3,800 children! This is all so shameful and wrong! 

Add to this the reports of abuse and terrible conditions in some of the detention centers.

One reason there are so many migrant children in detention centers is that fewer are being released. Recent rules mean that sponsors collecting children from centers must be fingerprinted, and this information is then shared with immigration officials. As a result would-be sponsors who are undocumented are put off from coming forward, for fear of risking deportation.

Now the DHHS has proposed new rules to allow children to be detained indefinitely. (Currently, the Flores settlement limits it to 20 days). These rules will also get rid of state inspection requirements for centers, and limit the type of relatives who children can be released to. These proposals are wrong in so many ways.

We now have 53 more days for public comment on these proposals. Please add your concerns to the Federal Register today.