Immigrant activists are fighting to prevent Texas from licensing controversial detention centers as child care facilities, saying these centers are more accurately described as prisons.
They won a victory in court this week. On Wednesday, an Austin district judge issued a temporary injunction blocking Texas’ largest immigrant family detention center in Dilley from being labeled as a child care facility, after activists from the Grassroots Leadership organization sued on behalf of two Central American mothers being detained there.
The judge issued a week-long restraining order preventing Texas officials from awarding a child care license to the privately-run, for-profit South Texas Family Residential Center. The order expires on May 13, when the court will hear the organization’s request for a temporary injunction against new state regulations to license the center.
Family Detention
In 2009, Grassroots Leadership ran a successful campaign to end family detention at the Hutto Detention Center in Taylor Texas. When the Obama administration announced that it would stop detaining families at Hutto, only 100 family detention beds remained at a small facility in Pennsylvania. However, after the wave of Central American families and children seeking refuge at our border in the summer of 2014, the administration reversed its decision, opening facilities at Artesia, New Mexico; Karnes, Texas, and Dilley, Texas - all run by private prison corporations. While Artesia closed at the end of last year, the number of family detention beds has skyrocketed and is expected to reach over 3,000 by this May. Grassroots Leadership is once again working to end the inhumane policy of family detention.