Today we’re featuring here an article about immigrant mothers and children in prison, and a great woman, a lawyer, who works pro bono with them. We also want to highlight the problems of detaining immigrant mothers and their children, and the conditions in detention centers.

Here name is Jennifer Smith, and she has been practicing immigration law in the Roaring Fork Valley for the last seven years. She recently returned from a trip to the immigrant detention center in Artesia, New Mexico, where she represented Central American mothers and their children.

You can read here her interview with Walter Gallacher in the Post Independent: http://www.postindependent.com/news/12744865-113/smith-gallacher-stories-immigrant

Smith says they provide pro bono services for the Rocky Mountain Immigration Advocacy Network, which is based in Denver. She is also the secretary for the Colorado chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association; Smith started hearing about through them about the immigrant detention center that was detaining Central American mothers and their children. She says Artesia is a big oil and gas town with a large refinery. The detention center is part of a larger campus that was originally designed as a federal law enforcement training center in the 1980s. It’s mostly dirt, concrete, chain-link fences and brown buildings. A lot of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are unhappy to be there, and are treating the detainees in a brutal and very negative way. And these are not criminals – they are mothers and children, fleeing from trauma, terror, and victimization in their countries, to protect their lives and the lives of their children.

Smith says that people in the detention center have a right to counsel but not government-provided counsel, so it’s different than criminal proceedings. Much of her time, and lawyers like her, is spent trying to help the client understand the process and what they are about to go through. The United Nations is pressing the United States to treat these folks as refugees. And Smith says that the government is, in a sense, trying to do that by detaining some of them long enough to have a “credible fear” interview with an asylum officer. But those detainees should also have an opportunity to assert their right to counsel or a representative who can help them present their case in the best possible way once they have that interview.

Immigrant Stories by Walter Gallacher appear on the fourth Tuesday of each month in the Post Independent, and this story is a collaboration with the Immigrant Stories Project, with storytellers from Parachute to Aspen. Read or listen to more personal history and immigrant stories here.

There has been a surge in mothers and children detainees from Central America

You can read also about Connecticut state’s decision in July 2014 to reject a federal request to house up to 2,000 immigrant children from Central America at the Southbury Training School.

A flood of young immigrants, many unaccompanied, others with their mothers or fathers, have flooded over the U.S.-Mexico border since October 2013, a figure that is expected to reach 90,000 at the end of the summer 2014. Under existing immigration law, unaccompanied minors being caught by Border Patrol agents are handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services, which houses them and advises them of their legal rights. HHS detention facilities are overwhelmed by the flood of young immigrants – but a family member in the United States can make a claim to free them.

To ease the overcrowding, the Obama administration has asked governors across the nation to take some of the children in. He’s also asked Congress to pass a law that would provide an additional $3.7 billion to handle the crisis and allow the administration to speed deportation of the children.

Many of the children have been abused by traffickers on their long journey from Central America through Mexico to the U.S. border. Many were detained while fleeing violence and extortion from gangs in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Immigrant children and their mothers in detention – humanitarian crisis

Meanwhile, the president’s immigration request in Congress has received mixed reviews. Many Democrats support the appropriation of more money to deal with the wave of immigrants, but will not support amending the Trafficking Victims of Protection Act to allow quicker deportation of the children.

The Pew Research Center for People & the Press released a report  showing that Obama gets very low ratings for his handling of the issue. It found just 28 percent of the public approves of the way he is handling the surge of children from Central America, while twice as many, 56 percent, disapprove. That is one of the lowest ratings for his handling of any issue since he became president.

You can read more in the CT Mirror here: http://ctmirror.org/latino-advocates-knock-malloy-on-central-american-immigrant-children-decision/

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