Mothers at US immigration center on hunger strike to protest year in custody

Female immigrants detained with their children at the Berks County Residential Center in Pennsylvania say they have been on hunger strike for more than a week to challenge government claims they are released after 20 days. By the end of August at least three families will have spent a full year in custody.

“On many occasions our children have thought about suicide because of the confinement and desperation that is caused by being here,” read a letter 22 mothers sent last week to Department of Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson.

The protest comes after Johnson recently defended the Obama administration’s controversial family detention practices by telling reporters it “is ensuring the average length of stay at these facilities is 20 days or less”.

Twenty days is the maximum time suggested in a federal order that limits how long children can be detained by immigration authorities to three to five days, except “in the event of an emergency influx”.

In their letter to Johnson, the mothers at Berks accuse the government of “making arguments that are false” and cite the federal order, saying “our children are entitled to freedom according to the case of Flores, and still they are here with us”.

The children held at Berks range from age two to 16 years old.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement would not comment on why the detainees have not been released within 20 days, saying that due to privacy laws it is prohibited from discussing specific cases.

Advocates supporting the hunger strike say 26 mothers were participating. ICE says about four continue to refuse to eat.

Many of those participating in the protest fled gang violence in Honduras and El Salvador and believe they will be killed if sent home. One woman escaped with her seven-year-old son after receiving repeated death threats because her partner, and son’s father, cooperated with local police in reporting their activities.

Those who have largely exhausted their legal options for remaining in the country are often transferred to Berks from two family detention centers in Texas and soon processed for removal. But last year, 28 families held there won a stay of removal after the American Civil Liberties Union argued they have a right for a federal judge to review their asylum hearings. In the meantime, they have been detained much longer than the standard of 20 days ICE says it is aiming for.

“ICE thinks of them as an aberration because they are fighting their cases,” said attorney Bridget Cambria, whose clients at Berks were denied asylum after fleeing violence and persecution in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

She says their denial of their asylum claim followed a cursory interview by a border official. Officials perform interviews with newly arriving migrants to determine whether they have a “credible fear” of returning to their home country that would warrant consideration for asylum. But having just arrived in the country disoriented and traumatized, Cambria said they were not well positioned to accurately express their fear of returning to their countries, and that this was later used against them in an asylum hearing.

“If you have a child subjected to abuse, or a mother who is a victim of violence, sometimes this is not something they can talk about with a person the day after they cross the border,” Cambria argued. “We often sit with them for hours at a time and you would be amazed at what starts to come out.”

The ACLU case is now pending in federal court and may end up before the supreme court in a process that could take another year. As it winds its way through the system, lawyers argue their clients should be released from Berks.

“It is becoming increasingly hard to conclude that there is not some punitive element to keeping these women in detention simply because they exercised their right to bring a constitutional test case,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.

Psychologists and pediatricians who visited Berks for a report produced by Human Rights First say the long-term confinement led to “symptoms of depression, behavioral regression and anxiety” in children they observed.

“What we saw among the adults were signs of fear and of unknowing what would happen to them next,” said Dr Alan Shapiro, who visited Berks for the report. “These feelings of helplessness and hopelessness hurt their ability to mitigate the stress on their children.”

In a statement, ICE said Berks “is staffed with medical and mental health care providers who monitor, diagnose and treat residents” and “also uses outside, private medical/mental health care service providers as needed”.

But Shapiro has suggested a follow-up visit since the hunger strike was launched, and says the American Academy of Pediatrics “is very concerned about the health and welfare of children and families in immigration detention”.

In the last week officials released two families from Berks who are not part of the ACLU’s lawsuit. One had been held there with her three-year-old son since November.

“They were in the exact same legal position as the mothers they won’t release,” said her lawyer Carol Anne Donohoe, who has other clients still inside. “It shows their detention is arbitrary, not mandatory.”