The Sunday New York Times gave migrant detention centers front-page treatment, profiling a big camp in Texas. Activists will no doubt note that the report does not mention the context of the detentions – nearly a half-million migrants await their day in immigration court – or that the “courts” are actually administration employees and part of the justice department.
But there is some notice taken on the lack of lawyers and that some people languish because they can’t post the “bond” to get out. The one amount noted in the report was $1,500.
Says the NYT: “While the number of people crossing the border illegally has dropped sharply this year, families continue to come. Since Oct. 1, more than 17,000 parents and children have been caught along the Southwest border, according to official figures. At the Dilley camp, more than half the detainees are children. Their average age is 9… The centers were designed to hold the women while they fight their cases in the immigration courts, part of the administration’s expansion of family detention to more than 3,000 beds nationwide, from only 95 a year ago.”
We will see if the NYT treatment is enough to make the issue a priority. Read the story here.