Over the winter 2015 holiday, I volunteered with the CARA Pro Bono Project to provide legal assistance to asylum-seeking women and children in federal immigration detention in Dilley, Texas. The detention facility in Dilley is the largest of three in the United States that house only mothers and their children. Many of the advocates who volunteer there call it the “baby jail.” They do so with good reason: the children imprisoned there are extremely young; many are still breastfeeding.
Unlike unaccompanied immigrant children, who are held in licensed childcare facilities and released to sponsors in the United States as soon as possible, children who cross the border with their mothers are detained in secure, prison-like facilities. They are subjected to a draconian immigration procedure called “expedited removal,” which calls for apprehended immigrants to be deported immediately unless they express fear of returning to their home country. Those who are afraid to return are detained. In detention, they have one opportunity to avoid deportation: passing a “credible fear interview,” which screens them for an asylum claim. At no point do they have a right to legal counsel.
The Department of Homeland Security classifies these families as threats to “border security.” In my view, it should classify them as refugees. Every woman I met was terrified of returning to her home country. Every woman I met had experienced violence and threats on an unimaginable scale. During our consultations, women would tug a neckline, lift a pant leg, or roll back a sleeve to show me a scar from a bullet, a cigarette burn, or a beating. Women described witnessing the violent murder of a colleague or family member and receiving a threat that they—and their children—would be next.
Asylum law is tremendously complicated, particularly as it applies to most of the women and children crossing the southern border. Most have fled increasingly pervasive gang violence and domestic abuse in the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras). Without a lawyer, it is difficult to condense years of hardship, violence, and horror into a clearly articulated asylum claim. The CARA Pro Bono Project, supported by a nationwide network of volunteer lawyers, is the only safety net protecting these families from immediate deportation, which for many is tantamount to a death sentence. CARA maintains a staff of a few attorneys and paralegals who work daily in the detention center and relies on rotating teams of volunteers to serve the enormous number of families in the facility. While I was there, we had two CARA staff members and eight volunteers to serve a population of 1,000 detained women and children. On the first day alone, we saw over 90 new clients and conducted over 50 consultations to prepare existing clients for their interviews. Despite the odds, the system works. With pro bono assistance, over 80% of detained women pass their credible fear interviews, and nearly all of those who do not pass ultimately have the decision reversed on appeal.
This March, I am excited to return to Dilley with Feerick Center Executive Director Dora Galacatos and a group of Fordham Law School students active in the Immigrant Advocacy Project, a student group dedicated to immigrants’ rights. The Feerick Center is proud to co-sponsor these student volunteers, who will spend their spring break working long hours in a detention facility on a dusty Texas plain serving detained families who desperately need their help. We are actively fundraising for the trip and are grateful for support. Please contact Dora Galacatos or me for more information about how to support this effort.