Hutto No "Model" Prison for Children

By Gouri Bhat, senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project.

Earlier this week U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) invited a group of reporters on a media tour of the new and improved T. Don Hutto Family Detention Center in Taylor, Texas. The Hutto facility houses immigrant children and families detained by the government and was the subject of multiple ACLU lawsuits filed against ICE last year, challenging the harsh, prison-like environment at the facility.

As reported by AP and other Texas newspapers, Hutto is now a transformed place. A year ago, before the ACLU filed suit, children wore prison scrubs and guards trained in adult correctional practices threatened misbehaving tots with separation from their parents. Now, due to numerous reforms mandated by a comprehensive settlement in August 2007 — including changes to physical environment and facility operations - Hutto is indeed more "family friendly."

However, the newspaper stories included comments by ICE’s Gary Mead, Acting Director, Office of Detention and Removal, suggesting that the reforms at Hutto had nothing to do with the settlement and would have happened anyway. Such comments are disingenuous at best. Anyone who is familiar with the furiously contested ACLU litigation or the ongoing public advocacy surrounding Hutto knows that ICE did not make changes at Hutto voluntarily or on its own schedule — the agency had to be forced to comply with its own legal obligations to the detained children.

Other reported statements by Mead are still more disturbing — specifically, his assertion that Hutto will be a model for future family detention centers to be opened by the government. Clearly, ICE’s enthusiasm for detaining families is undiminished, despite Hutto’s $33.6 million annual price tag and numerous admonitions from Congress to explore less expensive alternatives to detention before locking up immigrant children. If more family detention centers are on the horizon, the ACLU’s Hutto settlement should serve as a useful model in many respects and a cautionary tale.

However, despite the hard-won reforms at Hutto, the facility — managed by a for-profit adult corrections company — is still fundamentally and structurally a prison. As such, Hutto is far from the best or most appropriate place to house infants, toddlers, children and teens who are detained with their parents. Julie Myers, ICE Assistant Secretary and Mead’s boss, appeared to recognize this when she told Congress in October 2007 that "the physical structure of Hutto — a former prison — will not be used as the model for future facilities." We hope in this case, the boss is right.