I visited Dilley, Texas, in 2015 as part of a research team investigating practices at detention centers that housed migrants from Central America. Our study was commissioned by the Unitarian Universalist Church in order to report on and make recommendations regarding practices related to detaining migrants at that time. Again, remember that was 2015 and took place during the Obama administration. The findings of that study can be viewed in detail here. But, I would like to address statements by the Trump Administration who claim that practices of separation predated their own policy that began in May of 2018.
It’s true. Under Obama’s administration families were separated. We heard one particularly chilling story about a mother who was housed with her young daughter in one facility in Texas while her deaf son had been separated from her, and placed in another facility in Texas. The father was at a third facility in another state.
That said, the policies at that time reflected a disorganized immigration system in which decisions about placement were largely a function of whichever employee was tasked with assigning migrants to facilities at a particular time on a particular day. It was disorganized and chaotic, and the individual personalities of whoever was in charge seemed to be the deciding factor in a family’s fate.
[For more on this story by Claire Thomas-Duckwitz, M.A. Ph.D. L.P., go to http://witnessla.com/op-ed-a-p...policies-with-alarm/]
For another story on a similar topic, see Inside a Housing Facility for Undocumented Children.
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