In a letter sent to the Department of Homeland Security’s civil rights officer and inspector general Thursday, three immigration groups urged that the babies and their mothers should be released since ICE has “failed to demonstrate its ability to provide regular preventive care which could detect potentially serious complications that arise while in detention.”
The South Texas Family Residential Center, in Dilley, Texas, (capacity: 2,400 detainees) is about an hour’s drive from a center that’s equipped to provide specialized medical services, the advocates said according to VICE news.
The Texas facility known as Dilley, operated by the private prison company CoreCivic, is the largest of three family detention centers for undocumented migrants in the U.S.
Nine babies being kept there are younger than a year old, according to the letter from the American Immigration Council, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network.
Some mothers have reported to their lawyers that babies in Dilley have seen their formulas change suddenly, have lost weight or have had trouble sleeping since arriving at the facility.
In at least one instance, an infant was held for more than 20 days, potentially in violation of the Flores Settlement, which keeps the government from holding children for longer than 20 days.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) takes very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care,” an ICE spokeswoman said in a statement to VICE News. “ICE is committed to ensuring the welfare of all those in the agency’s custody, including providing access to necessary and appropriate medical care.”
Experts have told the US Department of Homeland Security in 2016 that the practice of family detention should be stopped entirely.