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, located in a valley surrounded by mountains, has acquired the nickname of "The Box." Its name originated similarly, from the Spanish phrase "el cajón," which means "the box" or "the drawer."
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 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 the cross-border crime and illegal immigration that threaten national security and public safety.
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.
The Port Isabel Service Processing Center near Los Fresnos, Texas holds detainees of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whose immigration status or citizenship has not been officially determined or who are awaiting repatriation. It is operated by Ahtna Support and Training Services.
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). Immigrants are detained for unlawful entry to the United States, when their claims for asylum are received, and in the process of deportation and removal from the country. During Fiscal Year 2018, 396,448 people were booked into ICE custody: 242,778 of whom were detained by CBP and 153,670 by ICE's own enforcement operations. A daily average of 42,188 immigrants were held by ICE in that year. In addition, over twelve thousand immigrant children are housed by facilities under the supervision of the Office of Refugee Resettlement's program for Unaccompanied Alien Children. Prior to referral to these other agencies, the CBP holds immigrants at processing centers; between mid-May and mid-June 2019, it held between 14,000 and 18,000 immigrants.
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.
Immigration policy and, specifically, illegal immigration to the United States, was a signature issue of U.S. President Donald Trump's presidential campaign, and his proposed reforms and remarks about this issue generated much publicity. Trump has repeatedly said that illegal immigrants are criminals and a 2015 study by the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute had concluded that around 820,000 unauthorized immigrants had criminal records; Despite Trump never explicitly mentioning correlation, critics have argued that there is an increasing amount of evidence that immigration does not correlate with higher crime rates.
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 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. According to the Internal Revenue Service, the group houses approximately 5,129 immigrant children in the United States.
The Trump administration family separation policy is an aspect of US President Donald Trump's immigration policy. The policy was presented to the public as a "zero tolerance" approach intended to deter illegal immigration and to encourage tougher legislation. It was officially adopted across the entire US–Mexico border from April 2018 until June 2018. Later investigations found that the practice of family separations had begun a year prior to the public announcement. 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. In January 2020 the SPLC reported that the official government number of children separated from their parents or guardians under the policy was 4,368. Also in January, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that more than 1,100 families have been separated since June 2018, the date that the administration said they would no longer separate children from their parents.
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 separated from their parents. 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.
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 have found that migrants were detained under conditions failing federal standards, featuring prolonged detention, overcrowding, poor hygiene and food standards. Some American citizens were wrongfully detained.
A timeline of events related to migrant children's detention centers in the United States