Casa San Diego is a holding facility located in El Cajon, California, for minors who are either unaccompanied at the United States border or who have been separated from their families. Currently, around 10 percent of children housed in Casa San Diego were separated from their parents on entry at the border. [1] Casa San Diego currently houses boys and girls between the ages of 6 and 17. [2]
The facility of Casa San Diego is run by Southwest Key Programs and located in El Cajon, California. [1] It is under 24-hour video surveillance and has an alarm that sounds when unauthorized individuals open the front door. [1] There are classrooms, a recreation area and a medical clinic. [3] The entire facility is fenced in with privacy netting. [3]
Minors held at the facility remain there for an average 45 days while they wait for the Department of Health and Human Services to place them into foster custody, with family members or to be deported to their home country. [4]
El Cajon is a city in San Diego County, California, United States, 17 mi (27 km) east of downtown San Diego. The city takes its name from Rancho El Cajón, which was named for the box-like shape of the valley that surrounds the city, and the origin of the city's common nickname "the Box".
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from cross-border crime and undocumented immigration that threaten national security and public safety.
The Mexico–United States border is an international border separating Mexico and the United States, extending from the Pacific Ocean in the west to the Gulf of Mexico in the east. The border traverses a variety of terrains, ranging from urban areas to deserts. The Mexico–U.S. border is the most frequently crossed border in the world with approximately 350 million documented crossings annually. Illegal crossing of the border to enter the United States has been a top issue in the States and is causing a border crisis. It is one of two international borders that the United States has, the other being the Canada–United States border to the north. It is the tenth-longest border between two countries in the world.
The T. Don Hutto Residential Center is a guarded, fenced-in, multi-purpose center currently used to detain non-US citizens awaiting the outcome of their immigration status. The center is located at 1001 Welch Street in the city of Taylor, Texas, within Williamson County. Formerly a medium-security state prison, it is operated by the CoreCivic under contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency through an ICE Intergovernmental Service Agreement (IGA) with Williamson County, Texas. In 2006, Hutto became an immigrant-detention facility detaining immigrant families. The facility was turned into a women's detention center in 2009.
Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292 (1993), was a Supreme Court of the United States case that addressed the detention and release of unaccompanied minors.
The United States government holds tens of thousands of immigrants in detention under the control of Customs and Border Protection and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The 2014 American immigration crisis was a surge in unaccompanied children and women from the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA) seeking entrance to the United States in 2014. According to U.S. law, an unaccompanied alien child refers to a person under 18 years of age, who has no lawful immigration status in the U.S., and who does not have a legal guardian to provide physical custody and care.
Casa Padre is a shelter for unaccompanied or separated immigrant minors in custody of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of Health & Human Services, located in Brownsville, Texas. The site opened in March 2017, and is still housing children in 2022. The building was formerly a Walmart store. The center is run by the nonprofit group Southwest Key Programs under contract from the federal government. Casa Padre is the largest licensed childcare facility in the United States, housing approximately 1,500 youths. The former Walmart store houses boys ranging from ages 10 to 17. According to the Internal Revenue Service, the group houses approximately 5,129 immigrant children in the United States, approximately 4 percent of the unaccompanied minors in the United States today.
The United States family separation policy under the Trump administration was presented to the public as a "zero tolerance" approach intended to deter illegal immigration and to encourage tougher legislation. In some cases, families following the legal procedure to apply for asylum at official border crossings were also separated. It was officially adopted across the entire US–Mexico border from April 2018 until June 2018. Under the policy, federal authorities separated children and infants from parents or guardians with whom they had entered the US. The adults were prosecuted and held in federal jails or deported, and the children were placed under the supervision of the US Department of Health and Human Services. More than 5,500 children, including infants, were removed and up to 2,000 still have not been reunited as of March 2024.
Protests against the Trump administration family separation policy are a reaction to the Trump administration policy of separating children from their parents or guardians who crossed the U.S. border either illegally or to request asylum, jailing the adults and locating the minors at separate facilities under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Southwest Key Programs is a Texas-based nonprofit organization that operates shelter facilities for unaccompanied immigrant minors and immigrant youth. It also provides youth justice alternative programming and educational programming. The organization was founded in 1987. Southwest Key reported in August 2016 that it operates in 3 states: California, Arizona, and Texas, with annual revenues of $242 million in 2016.
Ursula is the colloquial name for the Central Processing Center, the largest U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention center for undocumented immigrants. The facility is a retrofitted warehouse that can hold more than 1,000 people. It was opened in 2014 on W. Ursula Avenue in McAllen, Texas. In June 2018, it gained notoriety for the practice of keeping children in large cages made of chain-link fencing.
Family detention is the detention of multiple family members together in an immigration detention context. In the U.S. they are referred to as family detention camps,family detention centers, or family detention facilities.
The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) is a nonprofit organization based in Texas that aims to provide legal services for immigrants. As of 2018, it was the largest legal aid group of its kind in Texas. RAICES also runs Casa RAICES, which provides housing for thousands of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers per year.
Unaccompanied Alien Children is a United States government classification for children in immigration custody and the name of a program operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement to house and care for them. The term designates unaccompanied minors who are aliens, typically those who have been apprehended outside of a legal port of entry or judged inadmissible upon their entry.
The Tornillo tent city was a temporary immigrant detention facility for children located in Tornillo, Texas and operated by BCFS on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement. The Department termed it an "emergency influx care facility" and named it the Tornillo Influx Facility. When it was built in June 2018, the capacity was 400 minor immigrants with a one month contract. It was later expanded to a capacity of 4,000 minors. As many as 2,800 teenagers were held at the site before its closure was announced in January 2019. This made it one of the largest facilities in ORR's Unaccompanied Alien Children Program. All immigrant children had left the facility by January 11, 2019. Nearly 6,200 minors cycled through the facility within the seven months it operated. The area was previously used for a few months in 2016 to process migrant families and unaccompanied minors.
Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children is a 3,200-bed migrant children's detention center in Homestead, Florida. Until August 3, 2019, the center had been operated by Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. (CHSi), which is a subsidiary of the homeland security operator Caliburn International. It was believed to be the only remaining for-profit child detention center for migrants. The organization has faced severe criticism concerning immigration. Senator Elizabeth Warren had demanded that the detention facility be "closed down", and calls for investigation and oversight grew stronger when it was revealed that the federal government had paid $33 million in just 46 days for 1,200 of the empty beds.
The Trump administration has detained migrants attempting to enter the United States at the United States–Mexico border. Government reports from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General in May 2019 and July 2019 found that migrants had been detained under conditions that failed federal standards. These conditions have included prolonged detention, overcrowding, and poor hygiene and food standards.
This is a timeline of events related to migrant children's detention centers in the United States.