ICE Releases 15 Babies and Moms from TX Migrant Family Jail

Just days after a Coalition of Legal Advocacy Groups called for their Immediate Freedom, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has released 15 Babies and their Mothers from a Migrant Family Jail in Rural Texas.

Some of the Babies detained at Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center, the Groups said, were as Young as 5 Months and have been Sick, yet continued to be Jailed.

In their late February Letter to the Homeland Security Inspector General and Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Groups noted “an alarming increase” in the Number of Babies being Jailed by ICE.

“As of today,” the American Immigration Council, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Catholic Legal Immigration Network wrote, “there are at least nine infants under one year of age detained” at Dilley, “at least one of whom has been detained for more than 20 days.”

Children do Not belong in Detention, period, especially when those Kids are Sick and the Jails they’re in can’t properly Care for them.

"Every mother I spoke to said that her child was sick in some way," said Katy Murdza, Advocacy Coordinator at the American Immigration Council's Dilley Pro Bono Project.

She told CBS News that she “has worked with immigrants at Dilley for almost two years and had rarely seen infants at the detention center until last week.”

She said that while 15 of 17 Kids and their Moms have been Released to Friends and Family, there could still be Others Jailed that Advocates don’t even know about yet.

Originally, she’d been Aware of 12 Babies at Dilley when ICE said there were actually 17. “I’m not sure how many of those babies were later identified by us,” she told Rewire, “or how many are ones we still don’t have names for, and don’t have a way to compare ICE’s list with ours. So technically several babies ICE mentioned could still be in the detention center, although we only know of one that we have identified.”

Their Release comes as Internal Documents reveal that the Number of Women who have Miscarried while in ICE Custody has sharply Increased. “Pregnancy is a medical condition,” Dr. Alan Shapiro told the Daily Beast. “Why put at risk a woman and her fetus in a stressful, potentially traumatic environment that can negatively affect her health and the baby’s health?”










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