In the first and possibly only congressional oversight hearing on family separation, top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Matthew Albence made a truly shocking statement — even by Trump administration standards — claiming that the best way to describe the detention centers where hundreds of immigrant families are currently locked up “is more like a summer camp.” 

Albence didn’t keep it at that, though. Instead, he doubled down saying amenities include that “24-7 access to food and water” as well as “basketball courts,” “exercise classes,” and “soccer fields.” (These kinds of euphemisms aren’t entirely new — the Obama administration played around with the term “family-friendly” to describe these detention centers — only cruder.) 

It’s a ludicrous statement, entirely disconnected from reality or any semblance of humanity. The Trump administration, which bears full responsibility for forcibly separating thousands of immigrant parents and children and subjecting them to incalculable trauma, went before Congress and had the nerve to equate family incarceration to a stay at a summer camp.  

We shouldn’t even have to say this, but we will. There are so many, many reasons why Albence is dead wrong. 

1. Summer camps are not run by for-profit prison corporations.  

The Karnes detention center in South Texas, which the Trump administration has designated as a central location for families whom they forcibly separated and are now trying to deport, is run by a private, for-profit prison company. 

The GEO Group, which operates Karnes, is one of the nation’s largest private prison companies and has a long record of abuse and neglect at its facilities, includes ones that house children. For instance, the conditions and abuse at a Mississippi prison run by GEO Group were so bad that a federal judge wrote in 2012 that they painted “a picture of such horror as should be unrealized anywhere in the civilized world.” GEO staff peddled drugs to teenagers in their care and subjected some to brutal beatings, sexual exploitation, and solitary confinement. 

Yet the federal government continues to give contracts to private prison companies like GEO Group.   

2. People are free to leave summer camps.  

There is a reason why Karnes resembles a prison, surrounded by 15-foot fences with security cameras. Because it is one. The hundreds of families at Karnes have only one option to get out — forfeiting their asylum claims and signing deportation orders. 

For those navigating their legal cases from within, Karnes offers only five confidential meeting rooms, only four of which have phones. Space constraints prevent more than 17 lawyers from meeting with clients at any given time. 

3. Summer camps don’t cause lasting trauma. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics and other child-welfare experts have found that jailing children and parents can severely damage their physical and mental health, even irreversibly. 

Studies have found that young children in detention “may experience developmental delay and poor psychological adjustment.” Adults commonly suffered from “anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, difficulty with relationships, and self-harming behavior.” 

Finally, detention itself “undermines parental authority and capacity to respond to their children’s needs.” 

But the administration ignored warnings such as these from inside. During Tuesday’s hearing, Cmder. Jonathan White, a clinical social worker with the Department of Health and Human Services, testified that he told his superiors that “separation of children from parents entails significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child.” He said they assured him that wasn’t the plan. 

Albence’s testimony should drive home that there is nothing the Trump administration will not say to defend the indefensible. His answers alone present another reason why Congress should cut the Department of Homeland Security’s massive budget. The American people must stop financing such cruel and excessive punishment of immigrants with their hard-earned tax dollars.

Victoria López, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU National Prison Project & Heather L. Weaver, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief

Amid the chaos of family separations and zero-tolerance policies being implemented at our borders, Immigration and Customs Enforcement decided in early June to begin transferring immigrants to prisons operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Their appalling treatment in these prisons reveals, yet again, the depraved cruelty of this administration toward immigrants. 

On Wednesday, with our co-counsel partners — the Prison Law Office and the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center — we sued the Trump administration, ICE, and the BOP for violating the constitutional rights of immigrants currently detained at one of those federal prisons in Victorville, California. We are asking the court to order ICE to immediately remedy the unlawful conditions and ultimately remove immigrants from the prison. 

The Victorville prison is in a remote location in the California desert, two hours outside of Los Angeles, far from community support and legal services. It is an enormous complex of concrete buildings surrounded by fencing and barbed wire. The immigrant men who are detained there wear orange and brown prison jumpsuits, but most have not been convicted of, or even charged with, a crime. They are merely seeking relief under U.S. immigration laws — as is their legal right. 

Their movement is highly restricted. They are detained two to a cell, confined indoors for most of the day with little opportunity for exercise or exposure to sunlight. Their “meals” are often inedible: spoiled milk and meat that is infested with worms and maggots. The food is nowhere near adequate to sustain them. 

When they arrived at Victorville, the detained immigrants were not provided a change of uniform or underwear for several weeks. Some recount how they had to wash their underwear in the toilet in their cell with a small bar of soap that was also to be used for washing themselves. 

Medical and mental health needs are ignored, an especially dangerous situation for those who have fled persecution or torture in their home countries. Poor hygiene and medical neglect are so extreme that there have been outbreaks of chickenpox and scabies. When the men try to seek medical help, they are often dismissed, mocked, and verbally abused by staff who threaten them with isolation and other punishment. 

Communication with the outside world is severely limited. The men do not have access to legal materials, and the most basic information is provided solely in English, a language that the majority of the men do not speak. They were only allowed to consult with attorneys after the ACLU of Southern California won a court order granting access to the detainees. 

As if these conditions were not appalling enough, prison officials have denied the men one of the few things that might bring them some comfort or peace of mind: the ability to practice their faith. Victorville officials have refused to provide religious services or other opportunities for group worship and prayer. By policy, the men are not allowed to worship outside of their cells. Prison officials also have not provided meals that fully comport with their religious beliefs, forcing them to eat food that violates their faith or go hungry. 

Officials confiscated immigrants’ religious items, including religious clothing and holy books. For example, Sikh immigrants had their turbans taken. They have not been able to regain access to them or obtain replacements, even though wearing a turban is one of Sikhism’s most sacred religious practices. Another immigrant had his Bible seized and has likewise been unable to procure a replacement. These violations of religious rights persist, even though the BOP’s and ICE’s own regulations recognize the right to engage in these religious practices. 

Let’s be clear: No one — not even those convicted of crimes — should be subject to these shocking conditions of confinement. Many of the men report that they feel depressed and that they never expected that this could happen in America. The situation is so dire that some have engaged in self-harm, while others simply abandon their legal claims because the abuse is too much to endure. 

Despite all that these people have gone through, an ICE agent told one of our clients "to think of Victorville like a hotel."  

But the problem isn’t limited to Victorville. At the Sheridan Federal Detention Center in Oregon, another BOP facility, immigrants likewise suffer from lack of access to counsel and other unconstitutional conditions, which are being challenged by the ACLU of Oregon and the Federal Public Defender. The ACLU and ACLU of Oregon filed a brief on Wednesday with the Oregon federal district court, supporting a request for an emergency order directing prison officials to allow the immigrants incarcerated at Sheridan to practice their religion while they are confined. 

The men at the Victorville and Sheridan prisons are detained under an agreement between ICE and the BOP, allowing for the detention of 1,600 immigrants in BOP facilities in Washington state, Oregon, California, Arizona, and Texas. While ICE uses its own network of prisons and jails to detain immigrants, the move to transfer immigrants to BOP facilities at this level is unprecedented.      

Before these transfers started, federal prisons like Victorville were used to incarcerate those who have been convicted of crimes — and the BOP did a poor job of that. Over the years, the Victorville prison has been plagued by a number of problems, including understaffing that has led to dangerous conditions for those incarcerated there. 

BOP officials themselves have acknowledged that the situation in these facilities is untenable. Some BOP employees have reported that they were not provided adequate notice that hundreds of immigrants would be transferred to BOP facilities, which were unprepared to handle a sudden influx of people or the particular needs of this population. While reports initially indicated that the use of federal prisons for immigrant detention was a temporary, 120-day arrangement, the contracts between ICE and BOP will last a year. 

The harm resulting from such imprisonment is profound. Many of the immigrants detained at Victorville and Sheridan may suffer medical and mental health effects years or even decades after they are released. 

None of this had to happen. 

Like the Trump administration’s family separation and zero-tolerance policies, these transfers were made in reckless haste, with no regard for the well-being and lives of the immigrants who are detained. President Trump and ICE might not care about them, but we do. 

Astrid Dominguez, Director, ACLU Border Rights Center & Mike Seifert, Border Strategist, ACLU of Texas

Good things don’t always come to those who wait. 

This is the harsh reality of asylum seekers who have recently reached our ports of entry and are turned back by U.S. officials, only to wait indefinitely for a chance at refuge in America that may never come. Notwithstanding the recent change in U.S. policy on family separation, the outlook for asylum seekers at the border remains bleak. Despite the Department of Homeland Security’s claim that it’s a “myth” that the U.S. is turning asylum seekers away at ports of entry, our team at the border has witnessed officials doing exactly that. 

Consider Laura’s story. 

By June 12, 29-year-old Laura and her 6-year-old son Nicolas had been sitting on the hot sidewalk of the Brownsville-Matamoros International Bridge for three days, just 20 feet away from a plaque that marked the international boundary line between Mexico and the United States. Sitting in the shade of a jury-rigged bit of canvas, Laura explained that she had left her native Honduras, intent on escaping her violent husband, a police officer who would beat her with impunity because pleas to her government were ignored. She had made her way through Mexico, heading to Matamoros where she had hoped to cross into the U.S. through a port of entry to apply for asylum. 

Laura had heard that the United States had begun separating parents from their children, but she believed that coming through a port of entry would protect her and her son from that new form of government-sanctioned terror. Laura obviously had not heard that she could still have Nicolas taken from her at the port of entry, as has happened to a number of families over this past year. 

Laura’s hopes and good intentions ran into a gauntlet formed by three U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers standing just on the U.S. side of that boundary marker. The officers were stopping and turning away anyone who had intended to request asylum from entering the United States.

“They keep telling me to go come back later, that there is no room for people like me (asylum seekers), and that I should try again in five or six hours,” Laura explained. “But I have been here for three days, along with these other people waiting here, and no one gets in.”

Although a stiff breeze from the Gulf swept across the bridge, the heat was sweltering and the sun merciless. There were no water fountains or restrooms. Laura and the other families camped out on the Mexican side of the boundary were depending upon the kindness of strangers for their necessities. The people waiting on the bridge were miserable, and they were becoming desperate. One supervisor, when confronted about a mother and child who had been sitting on the bridge for days, candidly admitted, “I don’t really care.” Other CBP officers acknowledged that a supervisor, in fact, can allow an asylum seeker to cross the boundary line.

More than six weeks have passed since Laura and Nicolas were sitting on that bridge, just a couple of feet from Brownsville. We do not know what has happened to them or to the others who were enduring the hellish misery over those long days. Perhaps, in the end, Laura had been let through the bridge checkpoint and allowed to make her application for asylum. And perhaps she and her son were allowed to be together, or maybe they were separated. Maybe Jeff Sessions and Kirstjen Nielsen’s underlings forced Laura into the Sophie’s choice of choosing to be deported with her son or to be separated from him. Perhaps Laura gave up on coming into the U.S. at the port of entry and took her chances by crossing through the river.  The uncertainty can drive an advocate mad, but it pales to the agony these families go through.

In the days just prior to the July 26 deadline to reunite separated families, there were five families waiting in the sun at the Brownsville/Matamoros port. In other ports of entry, like Roma, Texas, CBP officers are telling advocates that there were no asylum seekers waiting for entry because Roma is no longer a “designated port.” Yet, when asked by advocates which ports are designated for entry by asylum seekers, CBP headquarters in Washington says that all are — it merely prefers that asylum seekers go to the “bigger” ports. CBP also says the “backlogs” are because they don’t have the capacity to hold or process asylum seekers, but when asked about its capacity, it cannot give a straight answer. And CBP is still taking days to process asylum seekers even when their offices are empty.

Over the border, in Mexico, advocates have noticed that Mexican immigration agents are stopping individuals and families they suspect of being asylum applicants to review their paperwork. If an immigrant does not have papers allowing lawful presence in Mexico, they are detained and put into deportation, even if valid papers may have been lost or stolen during the immigrants’ passage through Mexico. Two Mexican agents admitted to one advocate that they were “doing dirty work for the US” in keeping families from presenting themselves to US officials.

CBP needs to clarify for the public and the nongovernmental organizations what its protocols are, and what guidelines it abides by. Congress should hold a hearing to inquire about CBP’s actions to refuse and delay asylum applications at ports of entry.

The government’s “stick and stick” approach has only one goal: to inflict enough agony and misery on these already terrorized families to deter them from seeking asylum, no matter how they come to the United States.