[1]‘DREAMERS’ protest immigration laws – photo, Getty Images
BuzzFeed News
October 23, 2017
So Many Father-Led Families Are Crossing The US Border That Immigration Agents Don’t Have Room To Hold Them
There’s been a spike in Central American fathers and their children crossing the US border illegally over the last seven months, BuzzFeed News has learned. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official confirmed the increase, which human rights activists say is the unintended byproduct of the Department of Homeland Security’s successful push to stop the flow of women and children across the border.
A DHS official would not say how many father-led families have been detained since March, or how many of those families have since been released, but the official acknowledged that the department is releasing some. Activists say that’s because there isn’t space in facilities to house all the father-led families detained, so Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are forced to let hundreds of them go each week.
“We see as many fathers with children as pregnant women or moms with kids. It used to be so rare,” said Teresa Cavendish, the operations director at Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona, which operates short-term shelters for immigrants released by ICE.
An ICE official acknowledged the agency has seen a significant increase in fathers with children since the beginning of March, noting that 28 of the 37 families being held at the Berks Family Residential Center in Leesport, Pennsylvania, are led by fathers. Berks, which can house 96 individuals, is the only detention center in the country that accepts male-led families.
Although DHS has begun a push to expand immigration detention capacity, so far those new detention centers would only house adults…. READ MORE HERE. [2]