Child care centers exist to take care of children. The State of Texas requires most child care centers to be licensed, and to be licensed, they must meet certain minimal…
Social Justice Symposium, St. Edward’s University, Austin, Texas, April 4, 2016 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, March 30, 2016 Derechos en Crisis: Refugees, Migrant Detention, and Authoritarian Neoliberalism February 24 –…
Use open-ended questions. YES, even in a detention center. YES, even when you’re in a hurry. 1. Be aware of personal space. Respect your narrator’s personal space. Make yourself comfortable,…
Sample simple Credible OR Reasonable Fear Interview Request A woman or child can give this to her deportation officer, and the officer should forward it to the Asylum Office. REDACTED…
Adults who are in reinstatement proceedings, and therefore their kids who are with them, are in a bad and dangerous situation because, a) only eligible for withholding of removal or…
Why are we even talking about children and credible or reasonable fear interviews?? We don’t normally think about children and these interviews. When children come alone, they are not in…
By “passing,” we mean that an Asylum Officer had found that a person had demonstrated a significant possibility of establishing, at a full merits hearing, at least a well-founded fear…
We say that someone has “passed” her reasonable fear interview when she has convinced an asylum officer, usually by sharing a detailed and consistent narrative of what happened to her…
Expedited Removal is the process by which Customs & Border Protection (CBP) or Immigration Control & Enforcement (ICE) may summarily execute an order of removal of a person without that…
Detention of refugee women and children over the last thirteen or fourteen months at Artesia, Berks, Karnes, and Dilley was immoral, unconstitutional, a violation of international law, contrary to the…
April 6, 2015 We mothers who are detained in Karnes County Residential Center began a hunger strike on March 30 asking for freedom, for justice. This strike began because all…
An open letter to: ICE Supervisory Detention & Deportation Officer Hilario Leal, ICE Assistant Field Office Director Juanita P. Hester, Nora Estimbo Lacy, and Deborah Achim Dear AFOD Hester, SDDO…
Victoria Rossi is a brilliant writer who moonlights, for a lot less money than she deserves, as a paralegal. In December, the Texas Observer published her essay about visiting Karnes.…
Also check out this fine Texas Observer report on Karnes by Victoria Rossi, published on February 2, 2015.
Do read "The Shame of America's Family Detention Camps", a fine article in the New York Times by Will S. Hylton, published online on February 4, 2015. Among this article's…
In 2014, 60,000 women and children refugees fled persecution and violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras because of gang violence, domestic and child abuse. They seek asylum here. These…
Please read this stunning report Ending Artesia, by Stephen Manning. Explaining complicated, bizarre, technical legal proceedings with great clarity, this report is compelling. Stephen Manning's writing is beautiful and --…
Please read and sign this resolution and --- far more importantly -- take it to the groups to which you belong. Ask your group to sign and date the resolution. …
UPDATE: The Karnes County Commissioners Court voted this week, 3-2, to approve the expansion of the for-profit detention center at 409 Farm-to-Market Road 1144, run by the for profit private…
The problem The Dilley ICE prison is about to open. There, families – up to 2400 people -- will be incarcerated based on the thinnest and most transparent of irrational…
pink “tennis” swing to and fro. she’s wearing zebra stripes and a red top, tiny in the cushy big chair that rolls. long black hair narrows her face, shielding the…
You see me onscreen My name is an A number But I’m a woman - Anonymous
Adela Catalina* had plenty of reasons to leave. Forgive me being somewhat vague in the following account, but she still has vulnerable family in her home country, and we may…
November 22, 2014 Department of Homeland Security U.S. Citizenship and Naturalization Services Houston Asylum Office 16630 Imperial Valley Drive, Suite 200 Houston, Texas 77060 E-mail: [email protected] Dear Asylum Officers, I…
Dear friends, Maria Estela Marquez Marquez and her three daughters — Melissa (15 years old), Carmen (13 years old), and Jackeline (11 years old) — are refugees from El Salvador…
This morning -- Thursday, November 20 -- in Immigration Judge McPhaul's courtroom, as everyone waited in vain for a working audio connection between the "courtroom" in the Karnes detention center and…
The Honorable Jeh Johnson, Secretary U.S. Department of Homeland Security Washington, D.C. 20528 The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr. Attorney General U.S. Department of Justice 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington,…
DECLARACIÓN JURADA EN APOYO A LA SOLICITUD DE LIBERTAD CONDICIONAL DE (NOMBRE DEL [email protected]) Yo, (nombre del patrocinador), por medio de la presente declaro bajo juramento lo siguiente: Soy (residente…
In a way, private prisons seem a relatively new development, but the ugly foundation of private prisons is deeply ingrained in U.S. history. The government “detains” or imprisons or incarcerates…
A petition by Claudia Muñoz Dean Thomas W. Gilligan, ask UT alumnus Red McCombs to break lease with the Corrections Corporation of America and not contribute to detention and abuse…
Friday, November 21, 2014 7:300 - 8:30 p.m. Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center 600 River Street Austin, Texas 78701 A film by Matt Gossage for more information see…
Until today, I was mostly getting phone calls from women in Karnes and from family members around the country; texts from family members in Honduras. Today at 12:30, I received this e-mail: Estamos detenidas en Karnes tenemos tres hijos cada una y tenemos tres meses de estar detenidas, teniamos abogados pero nos dejaron el caso […]
Want to understand what’s going on with refugees, immigrants, and immigration courts? Go. Take a morning or an afternoon and visit the immigration court closest to you. Look. Listen. Draw. Take notes. Then talk about it. (Talk about it. Talk about it….) Most immigration hearings are public, although judges typically close cases when 1) either […]
Drawing by Rini Templeton, 1935-1986 I went to see three families yesterday in Karnes, and without planning to, ended up talking to seven mothers and their children. Obviously I will not represent all of them, but I hope that each woman finds representation through Karnes Pro Bono Project team. I cannot convey what it is […]
Follow the link below for extremely useful information from Andrade Legal — Immigration Law in Boise, Idaho. Kudos to María Andrade and her colleagues! And visit the Andrade Legal for even more extremely useful information. The attach PDF refers to a list of bond companies. I have not included the list of bond companies because […]
This is a translation of a testimony by a child inside describing the "freezers" that people are being put into at the McAllen detention center.
According to Texas law, “if you suspect the abuse or neglect of a child, it is your duty to report it immediately.” Did you read any qualifiers or exceptions? Did you read that “it’s your duty to report child abuse or neglect immediately, EXCEPT if – the abuse or neglect is at the hands of […]
Melissa, Carmen, and Jackeline are three sisters who, with their mother, fled El Salvador seeking refuge. Right before they left, the three girls had watched as a gang member came into their tiny home and held a gun to their mother’s head, threatening to rape and kill all four of them. They’ve been locked up […]
Make a donation to the Karnes Bond Fund, at Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Services (RAICES) to help a woman and her children “bond out” of Karnes to go live with family or community members as they pursue their claims for asylum. If you want, you can make a donation specifically to assist […]
“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle there is no progress. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and […]
DECLARACIÓN JURADA EN APOYO A LA SOLICITUD DE LIBERTAD CONDICIONAL DE (NOMBRE DEL [email protected]) Yo, (nombre del patrocinador), por medio de la presente declaro bajo juramento lo siguiente: Soy (residente permanente legal/[email protected]) de los Estados Unidos (consulte el anexo). Soy (parentesco) de (nombre del [email protected]), quien solicita asilo político de (país de origen) y quien […]
Read the the material that ICE lawyers present in immigration court to support its argument that the refugees — specifically the women and children — fleeing El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras since June pose a “national security threat” to the United States. Read it and weep. ICE Bond Packet
ICE and GEO, a private, for-profit corporation, are currently holding 500 refugee women and children are against their will in a jail (“residential center”) in Karnes County, about two hours southeast of Austin, or about an hour east of San Antonio. The facility held men until this summer, when it was converted to a “family” […]
I have the sickening feeling that very few people understand what “due process” translates into when we are talking about immigrants who are “detained” (locked up, imprisoned, incarcerated) in ICE “detention facilities” (jails, prisons). I’ve added a page to this website with a little bit of information. Where I link to a different page — […]