In a series of letters released by the Immigration Justice Campaign, migrant moms detained with their children inside the South Texas Family Residential Center—a family jail—are pleading for their release. "You will see that what we lived was a horror," one mom, Gabriela, wrote. "I wouldn't wish it even on my worst enemy."
Once-separated migrant families could be released in favor of proven alternatives to detention. Instead, the Trump administration is hellbent on locking them up together, perhaps indefinitely. "My children were far from me and I didn't know if they were okay, if they were eating or sleeping,” another mom, Elena, wrote. “I have suffered a lot. ICE harmed us a lot psychologically.” But reunification didn’t end their trauma.
“We can't sleep well because my little girl thinks they are going to separate us again,” she continued. “I wouldn't want this to happen to anyone." Elena’s story, sadly, isn’t unique. “The mothers' writings reflect a mix of despair, bewilderment and hope,” CNN reports, “as they remain in government custody and legal limbo, weeks after they were reunited.”
Trump officials have grotesquely defended family detention, with one top ICE official even comparing these facilities to a “summer camp.” But when pressed if he’d send his own kids to one, the official repeatedly dodged the question. That’s because he wouldn’t. Children do not belong in detention, period, and the fact that these officials won’t send their kids to these facilities they continue to defend says everything you need to know about the conditions in there.
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