Some advocacy groups say immigrant families, many with small children, are being kept in jail-like conditions in Texas and Pennsylvania.
Critics say the Texas facility is inhumane and should be shut down. In a new report, the groups seek immediate closure of the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor. The center, which opened last May, used to be a prison.
The criticism comes from the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.
The groups based their findings on their member visits and interviews with detainees.
The Pennsylvania center - the Berks County Shelter Care Facility - has about 84 beds. The Texas facility can house up to 512 people.
Homeland Security has defended the centers as a workable solution to the problem of illegal immigrants being released, only to disappear before hearings.
Immigrant families held in prison-like facility, critics say
Dozens of high chairs line a cafeteria wall at the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility.
School-age children spend part of their day in the classroom, a computer lab, the library or on the playground.
But critics say those slices of life at the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility don't tell the whole story at the site for families with children awaiting possible deportation.
They point instead to the double-layered chain link fence topped with concertina wire in places. Uniformed, handcuff-toting correctional officers called “counselors'' are on hand.
In a new report, two advocacy groups call Hutto's prison-like setting dehumanizing and contrary to the federal government's own immigration policies.
Immigration officials say the facility is meant to end the “catch and release'' practice that in the past permitted families in the U-S illegally to remain free while awaiting a court hearing. Many never showed up in court.
The 512-bed former prison is operated by Corrections Corporation of America under a contract with Williamson County.
