Immigrants face abuse at US detention centers: Report
An American human rights organization has warned that undocumented immigrants and their children held at US immigration facilities have suffered physical and mental abuse, including sexual violence.
The parents and children detained at the Berks County Residential Center in Pennsylvania face depression, anxiety and feelings of helplessness, Human Rights First said in a report released on Wednesday.
The Berks facility is currently one of three family detention centers in the United States along with the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas and the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas.
“Families detained at the three detention facilities—Dilley, Karnes, and Berks—have suffered the detrimental effects on their physical and mental health associated with being detained, lengthy detention stays, and lack of access to legal counsel,” the report said.
“The bottom line is that detention, even for short amounts of time, is detrimental to the health and well-being of a child,” Human Rights First official Olga Byrne, who researched and wrote the report, said.
The rights group has also highlighted the trauma children go through when guards enter rooms of sleeping families with flashlights every fifteen minutes through the night.
“The Obama administration should immediately abandon this misguided approach and implement other measures, such as community-based programs, which are proven effective and less costly,” Byrne stated.
Immigration has become a controversial topic in the US presidential campaign.
US presidential candidate Scott Walker said on Monday his immigration policy is "very similar" to the plan proposed by Republican frontrunner Donald Trump which amounts to curtailing legal and illegal immigration.
The Wisconsin governor and Republican White House hopeful told Fox News that he wants to "secure the border" and "enforce the law," as well as build a wall across the US-Mexico border and crack down on sanctuary cities.
Walker's remarks amount to a comprehensive attack on legal and illegal immigration and suggest that Trump's rise risks turning the Republican primary into a competition over who can be toughest on immigrants.
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