Twenty-two mothers who have been interned with their children for up to a year in a for-profit immigration detention facility entered the ninth day of a hunger strike on Wednesday. Neither the mothers nor their children have committed any crimes, nor have they been charged with any. They have no idea when they will be released. Advocates and attorneys representing the women tell The Nation that their children are suffering, they feel that they’ve been lost in the system and their desire for freedom has become desperate.
The women and their children are housed six to a room at the Berks County Family Detention Center in Leesport, Pennsylvania. They share a bathroom with a short curtain but no door. They’re awoken at 6:30 every morning for the first of several mandatory check-ins. During the night, a guard shines a flashlight into their eyes every 15 minutes. Most of them are badly sleep deprived. Many of their kids are showing symptoms of early childhood trauma and other developmental problems; some have stopped growing. The youngest detainee at Berks is 2 years old, and has spent around half of his life in detention. Like the other children, he isn’t allowed to sleep in his mother’s bed at night.
They’re refugees who fled brutal violence in Central America and are now caught in a legal limbo. They were denied asylum after a cursory interview at the border and are subject to deportation. But attorneys representing them say that the screenings they went through at the border were legally flawed. The Obama administration claims that they have no right to appeal the decisions—a stark departure from longstanding legal precedent. They’re now being detained, indefinitely, while a legal challenge works its way through federal courts.
[For more of this story, written by Joshua Holland, go to https://www.thenation.com/arti...oddlers-behind-bars/]
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