Yesterday, I was grateful to spend time honoring the amazing women in my life for the sometimes thankless – yet always vital – job of being a caring mother. Mother’s Day is a time to honor the sacrifices of all the mothers in our lives who spend day in and day out providing for their children. They unselfishly give themselves on every level, and are a true testament of the strength and fortitude required to raise a family.
As we honor our mothers across the United States, I want to recognize the hundreds of mothers who won’t be receiving flowers or cards, despite tremendous personal sacrifices to provide the best possible life for their children. I’m speaking of the mothers who are ensnared in our broken immigration system, being held in family detention centers that are nothing less than prisons for themselves and their children. On the very day that we honor motherhood, how can we allow these women and their children to suffer behind bars?
Each and every day, our laws deprive these mothers and their children of their liberty and their due process, holding them in jail-like detention centers right here in our own backyard. Most of these detainees are asylum seekers fleeing terrible violence in their home countries. They arrive at our borders seeking safety and protection for themselves and their children. Instead, they wind up behind bars without due process or even consideration of the terrible circumstances they are fleeing.
In 2009, the Obama administration terminated large-scale family detention due to numerous human rights abuses. Unfortunately, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reversed previous policy curtailing the detention of children last summer and opened a temporary family facility in New Mexico and two new, permanent, privately run facilities in Texas. Soon after opening, reports of unimaginable conditions began to emerge from inside: allegations of sexual abuse by guards and staff; children experiencing weight loss, anxiety, and depression; spoiled food and contaminated drinking water; lack of access to social services to cope with trauma and abuse, as well as the re-traumatizing effects of incarceration, and no access to legal counsel for their asylum cases.
While I spent Mother's Day with my family, honoring the mothers in my life, I couldn’t help but think about all the mothers who have to spend even one more day in detention, wondering if and when they and their children will ever be released.
Mothers like Delmy Cruz, detained at the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas with her 11 year old son who refuses medical care, even with a fever, because the medico is where he was told he was going when guards put him and his mom in isolation. Despite a pending asylum case, Delmy and her son have been detained for over ten months already and have been denied bond. She was one of almost 80 mothers at Karnes who launched a hunger strike during Easter Week to protest their unjust detention and mistreatment. Now, another holiday has come and gone, and Delmy and her son remain trapped inside.
These mothers have bravely endured great risks and sacrifices in order to do what any parent would do: everything in their power to keep their children safe. Child welfare experts have shown time and time again that detaining children is detrimental to their physical and mental health. Detention also re-traumatizes their mothers, many of whom are survivors of gender based violence, and need access to appropriate services in order to heal and be able to care for themselves and their children.
Being a mother is the hardest job in the world, and we need more than cards and flowers one day a year to honor the sacrifices and commitment of all mothers. It’s time for our country to end the practice of detaining mothers and children once and for all. If we truly wish to make our immigration system more humane, protect vulnerable women and children, and keep families together, we can start today by ending family detention.
