Houston kids describe life inside immigration detention
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Susej F., a 9-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Houston and was detained for 50 days. Photo: Courtesy of ProPublica
Houston-area children detained with their parents at a South Texas immigration facility describe missing basic comforts and feeling trapped, according to letters published Monday by ProPublica.
The big picture: The public rarely gets a window into life inside the immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas — or how the children there are faring.
- Hundreds of kids are being detained at the center, per ProPublica.
Zoom in: Susej Fernández, a 9-year-old Venezuelan girl who was living in Houston when she and her mother were detained, wrote, "I have been here too long ... Seen how people like me, immigrants are been treated changes my perspective about the U.S. My mom and I came to The U.S looking for a good and safe place to live."
- Susej talks more about her daily struggles in detention in this video.
A 14-year-old Colombian girl from the Houston area, who signed her name Gaby M.M., wrote that the Dilley guards "have bad manner of speaking to residents ... the workers treat the residents unhumanly, verbally and I don't want to imging how they would act if they where unsupervised."
Context: Texas has the only immigrant detention centers in the country that hold children and their parents, meaning most families who aren't immediately deported are sent here, the Houston Chronicle reports.
- ICE's Dilley facility is designed to hold parents and children together while immigration cases move forward — sometimes for weeks or months.
CoreCivic, the private company that runs the detention center, tells ProPublica the center is "subject to multiple layers of oversight to ensure full compliance with policies and procedures, including any applicable detention standards."
Go deeper: Read more about the conditions of children detained and their full letters.