NETWORK believes there are several short-term, low-cost strategies that Congress can take immediately to alleviate the humanitarian problem of migrant children from the Central American “Northern Triangle” countries on our southern border. Two key strategies are to stop certain programs that have exacerbated the situation.

The first is outlined in a paper by the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Jesuit Conference. It was provided at a human rights hearing in late October 2014 and highlights how the U.S. supports and assists Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala by training, equipping and funding their law enforcement and military units. These are the units that are instrumental in confining and deporting people, often children and asylum-seekers, who should be protected and whose rights are being abrogated.

The Inter-American Court for Human Rights has frequently emphasized that migratory policies should guarantee refugees’ rights to humane treatment, personal liberty, due process and effective judicial remedies, none of which are being respected – especially those of potential asylees, according to numerous civil society organizations in these countries. Instead, the U.S. praises and supports these governments that are indirectly assisting the U.S. in restricting these migrants from entering its territory.

The WOLA and Jesuit Conference document outlines in detail the equipment, training and capacity-building that the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law enforcement (INL), the U.S. Border Patrol, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other U.S. migration control and law enforcement entities have provided to law enforcement and special forces’ units of Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. While the enhanced assistance is purportedly for drug interdiction and human trafficking, these units routinely intercept people fleeing to escape targeted violence, persecution and torture and force them back to situations from which they are attempting to escape without any of the safeguards for humanitarian protection.

According to the WOLA and Jesuit Conference report, Mexico is routinely deporting children and families who would merit international protection. The report took them to task for not adopting a comprehensive public policy on asylum geared to preventing and punishing the acts of violence and discrimination to which migrants in Mexico are subjected. Even Counselor of the Department of State, Ambassador Thomas Shannon affirmed in his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on July 10 that one of the key purposes of the Mexican policy is to repatriate Central Americans before they reach the U.S. border.

The situation along the Honduran-Guatemala border is fraught with the same peril as that along the Guatemalan-Mexico border because the strategic priority is to “stem-the-flow” of migrants without any concern for the implications of cutting off access to asylum for those displaced by violence, organized crime or the unwillingness of the government to address the needs of those targeted for abuse and persecution.

In Mexico, even routine screenings to determine if individuals have well-founded fears of persecution or violence against them are not part of the intake process when Central American children and adults are interdicted by Mexican migration authorities. Yet, when civil society organizations, researchers and religious groups working in non-profits in these countries have interviewed returned migrants, they have discovered that many of those interviewed left their countries due to credible claims for international protection.

It is exceedingly important that Congress investigate our policies of assistance and support to Mexican, Guatemalan and Honduran law enforcement and military forces to determine if the U.S. is contributing to the interception, detention and deportation of Central American migrants who should be screened for asylum and international protection, thus depriving them of their human rights. The Inter-American Human Rights System has made clear that no people, especially no children, should have their access restricted to territories where they might receive asylum. Clear prohibitions must be placed on funds for the aforesaid purposes. And such an investigation, while not wholly cost-free, would be relatively low-cost. This is the first strategy supported by NETWORK that requires the U.S. to end its military assistance to these countries if a congressional investigation concludes that asylees’ potential rights are being ignored.

A second related policy that could and should be implemented in the short-term and that meets the criterion of low-cost is closing the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas). The Institute, funded by U.S. taxpayer dollars, used the facility to train Latin American dictators and their militaries in various terrorist techniques, including varying levels of intimidation and torture methods. Even after President Clinton revamped the school and changed its curriculum in the 1990s to be certain that human rights and democracy were central to all studies, it remains a highly controversial program.

The question remains whether the more rigorous human rights training program at the Institute is actually taught or only given lip-service. The school has been criticized for years after its reorganization due to human rights abuses performed by its former students. Just two of many instances of human rights abuses include the murder of six Jesuits, their housekeeper and her daughter in which a UN panel concluded that 19 of the 27 killers in November 1989 were graduates of the school. In 2009, a coup in Honduras against the democratically-elected president was also carried out by graduates of the school.

A third strategy NETWORK supports during this current lame-duck Congress, is to review carefully and comprehensively the reform plans developed by the Central American countries of the Northern Triangle. Congress should ensure that the countries’ strategies reflect clear priorities, such as improved healthcare systems, and how these priorities are to be funded. Most importantly, all groups in society, including wealthy landowners and business people, must agree to pay their share of taxes to help finance the reform efforts undertaken by these countries. The plans cannot rest upon the assumption that the U.S. or other outside sources will pay the full freight.

In a September 26 paper, WOLA developed 12 excellent principles for assessing the plans of these countries. They include that these “governments must show institutional commitment to full implementation” and a “focus on institutional reforms that will improve the daily life” of their citizens, as well as several others worthy of consideration. One of their cautions is very sensible – to “avoid any plan that is too narrowly targeted on only one element of the problem.” Our friends in these countries have emphasized the significance of this latter element.

Another short-term, low-cost strategy supported by NETWORK during this lame-duck session of Congress relates to proper care for unaccompanied children from the Central American Northern Triangle countries once they have been transferred from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)/Department of Children’s Services (DCS) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after 72 hours. While being held in the “least restrictive setting,” the children will require protection, appropriate medical assistance, and all-round care for their well-being until their transfer to a parent, legal guardian, adult relative or individual designated by the parent or, alternatively, to a foster parent who has been carefully vetted. Such care will require additional funding for HHS due to the influx of these children at our southern borders.

In addition, highlighted by numerous witnesses, delays in transport or a lack of immigration detention capacity has led to children being held for much longer than 72 hours by the Border Patrol before transfer to ORR/DCS. We strongly believe this is unacceptable and contravenes the directives of the Inter-American Court for Human rights regarding children’s and juveniles’ rights, not to speak of their basic dignity as human beings.

It should be noted that currently the child migrant crisis has dropped out of most news reports, even as the children themselves have moved into the less visible venues of the nation’s immigration courts. The American Immigration Council (AIC) announced on October 14 that more than 85% of the 10,041 minors whose cases were begun between July 18 and the end of September showed up in court for their first hearing before a judge. AIC pointed out that an even higher percentage would appear if they could be assured that an attorney would assist them.

Yet issues relating to the child migrant crisis are far from over. The above-described short-term, low-cost strategies can begin to deal with the problems and there are long-term, higher-cost policies that are needed that must await the 114th Congress. This blog is the first of two that will focus on this issue.

“Unlocking Human Dignity: A Plan to Transform the U.S. Immigrant Detention System,” a new scathing joint report from the Migration and Refugee Services/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the Center for Migration Studies (CMS), speaks of the baleful effects of immigrant detention on the lives of persons who pose no threat or danger, but are treated like criminals.

The report is filled with troubling facts uncovered through onsite visits, an extensive review of past publications, and an unvarnished examination of the current system. For example, did you know that the number of persons detained annually increased from roughly 85,000 in 1995 to over 440,500 in 2013?

Now that’s a radical expansion, and the number of detention centers has expanded as well, costing taxpayers more than $2 billion annually. As the report itself indicates, those “numbers only hint at the toll that this system exacts in despair, fractured families, human rights violations, abandoned legal claims, and diminished national prestige.”

The current detention system is a sprawling hodgepodge of facilities, consisting of state and county jails, privately-run for-profit prisons, Bureau of Prison facilities, Border Patrol holding cells, and even “service processing centers” administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Detained immigrants in these facilities often receive worse treatment and fewer protections than criminals serving prison sentences. Numerous reports have described the many problems that exist in a system where standards are not codified and independent oversight is lacking: poor or nonexistent health services; the misuse of segregation; physical, emotional and sexual abuse; women forced to deliver babies in restraints; frequent hunger strikes; restrictions on visitation; violence and discrimination against gay, lesbian and bisexual persons; problems related to due process, legal access and religious expression – among many others.

The situation is even worse where children are involved. A February report by “Detention Watch Network” notes that studies by the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, New York University’s Bellevue Program for Survivors of Torture, and Physicians for Human Rights conclude that detention is psychologically damaging and completely inappropriate for children because it aggravates isolation, depression and mental health problems associated with past trauma. Onsite visits by members of the “Detention Watch Network” have also shown that children as young as eight months wore prison uniforms, lived and slept in locked prison cells with open-air toilets, and families were subject to highly restricted movement and threatened with family separation if children cried or played too loudly.

Since 2009, Congress has mandated that DHS maintain at least 33,400 detention beds, known ever since as the “detention bed quota.” And many members of Congress interpret this mandate as requiring DHS to fill that many beds each night. The current DHS Secretary, Jeh Johnson, has testified that he interprets this language to require that DHS maintain 34,400 beds, not detain 34,400 persons every night. Yet, nothing has changed at the detention level.

Another major problem (there are so many, it is difficult to enumerate all of them) is an overreliance on for-profit, privately-run detention centers. These have burgeoned over time, just as they have in the correctional system, so that by 2015, “for-profit prison corporations administered nine of the nation’s ten largest immigrant detention centers” (USCCB/CMS report). There is a plethora of studies to demonstrate that for-profit agencies strive to maximize profits for their shareholders, spend exorbitant funds on lobbying both federal and state legislators for their own causes, and spend millions on campaigns. However, the USCCB/CMS report claims that the real culprit is DHS’s lack of oversight expertise to assess performance under the contracts and a lack of data collection needed to address any deficiencies in the system.

As a May 19 editorial in the Seattle Times forthrightly indicates, “the immigration system is distorted by partisanship, xenophobia, conflicted guidance and pressure from companies that are paid a fortune to run detention centers…”

The New York Times Editorial Board pointed out on May 15 that the immigrant detention system has become an enormous funnel for the overburdened and underfunded immigration courts, which receive a meager $300 million from Congress each year, only one-sixtieth of what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol (BP) receive. More than 400,000 cases were pending before immigration judges at the end of March 2015, with an average case waiting 599 days to be heard. This hardly constitutes due process for immigrants.

In addition, immigrant detention has been employed as part of a broader enforcement strategy to prevent refugees and other migrants who are fleeing violence from reaching U.S. protection. Not only is this unconscionable, but it has also been, at times, counterproductive. As Pope Benedict said in 2007, immigration and protection policies must serve the human person, not treat the human person as a means to an end.

However, the paramount concern of the USCCB/CMS report is different than any particular deficiency. Central to the issue is the fact that detention is treated as a pillar of immigration enforcement and is the major management tool in the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) toolkit. Detention, in its layout, construction, staffing plans and management strategies operates like a prison system and is based on traditional prison principles of command and control. But this so-called correctional system operates without the same level of professionalism and proficiency expected of a correctional system, which has to uphold numerous minimum standards of treatment. Yet the only purpose of detention is to ensure that noncitizens appear for court proceedings.

The USCCB/CMS report points out that the purpose of detention would be accomplished by supervised release with case management and community-based support services in most cases – and calls for the least restrictive conditions placed on others where it is required. The report highlights the fact that American Bar Association (ABA) standards and guidelines of the past few years also support using alternatives to detention to transform the immigrant detention system.

The USCCB/CMS report notes that DHS’s own 2014 data show that between fiscal years 2011 and 2013, the two programs they operate using alternatives to detention yielded an appearance rate of 99% at court hearings and 95% at final removal court hearings. These data clearly demonstrate that detention is not only hurtful to the recipients but unnecessary, and wasteful of scarce resources.

Although the Obama administration’s reforms since 2009 have been humane and made notable differences in the lives of many detainees, too many of these reforms have been incremental in nature and avoided the major issue of detention per se. The high costs and human rights abuses will continue without the fundamental change that the USCCB/CMS report advances.

It is important to support the recommendations of the USCCB/CMS report, especially the replacement of detention with an expansion of all types of less restrictive alternatives to ensure appearances, as well as increasing the funding for immigration courts by an order of magnitude. In the meantime, we support curtailing and rigorously monitoring all for-profit facilities. Our biblical tradition recognizes the right to migrate in response to war, human rights abuses and extreme poverty. As the bishops’ introduction letter to the USCCB/CMS report indicates, migrants fall within every marginal group who deserve assistance – those who are hungry, thirsty, stranger, naked, ill and imprisoned.

On June 3, the House of Representatives passed its fourth spending bill of 2015, the Commerce-Justice-Science (CSJ) bill. However, it was not without an anti-immigrant attack, this time by Representative Steve King (R-IA-04). His amendment, which passed 222-204, prohibits the use of any funding by the Department of Justice to continue its legal battles concerning President Obama’s November 2014 executive actions. Sadly, these efforts to continue forcing our immigrant brothers and sisters to live in constant fear of deportation have become expected in this Congress.

What exactly does this mean moving forward? On May 26, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Department of Justice’s emergency stay request of the preliminary injunction issued by Texas federal district court judge Andrew Hanen. The aforementioned injunction halted all progress towards the implementation of Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA+). The next steps in the process are to appeal the injunction itself (which will happen in New Orleans in July) and to decide the merits of the case, or whether the states behind the lawsuit have standing to pursue it. Representative King’s amendment is designed to prevent the federal government from pursuing either of these steps!

Overall, this new amendment is a disgusting attempt to further marginalize and isolate parents and children who deserve the chance to fully participate in our society through an eventual pathway to citizenship. However, this amendment does not spell the end of the fight against the legal challenges to DAPA and DACA, and we look forward to a successful conclusion to these legal challenges that will allow the executive actions to move forward. We are mindful, however, that these executive actions are only a temporary fix to address parts of a broken system.

Congress should pass comprehensive immigration reform that fixes our broken immigration system and allows millions of undocumented men, women and children currently living in the U.S. an opportunity to fully participate in our society by providing a pathway to citizenship. In this way, Congress can heed our moral call to welcome the stranger and treat all people with dignity.

The Republican presidential contest is in full swing and one of the key issues that have been discussed thus far is the issue of immigration. Unfortunately for supporters of comprehensive immigration reform, the hysteria and demeaning rhetoric on the campaign trail has spilled over to the Halls of Congress with anti-immigrant Members of Congress once again pushing legislation to further militarize the U.S. border and to increase enforcement actions against immigrant communities around the country. The religious community, working with immigrant rights groups, is actively working to stop anti-immigrant legislation in Congress.

Pope Francis’s arrival in Washington, DC and his address to Congress on September24 present a challenge to anti-immigrant Members as well as the Republican leadership in Congress. It is widely expected that the pope will raise the issue of immigration during his trip and call on Members of Congress to pursue policies that welcome immigrants and refugees. It is hoped that his visit will have a positive impact on the Hill.

One of the most immediate threats this September is a bill that passed the House right before August recess and is set to be taken up in September. Sponsored by Senator Grassley and Senator Vitter, it is called the “Stop Sanctuary Cities Act” (S. 1814). The Grassley/Vitter amendment seeks to coerce law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to implement DHS’s immigration detainers, even though multiple federal courts have found that such detainers present constitutional problems. Under the amendment, law enforcement officials in over 300 cities and countries that refuse to honor the detainers risk losing federal justice department (“DOJ”) and housing department (“HUD”) funding. The amendment also creates new mandatory minimum sentences that would create unprecedented overcrowding in the federal prison system, even as other leaders and lawmakers including the senators’ own colleagues on both sides of the aisle have committed to reduce incarceration levels in our nation’s prisons and jails.

A second threat exists to immigrants in budget and tax debates. There are some human needs programs and tax credits, such as the Child Tax Credit, that benefit immigrant communities. There are already a number of proposals to cut back or eliminate these benefits to immigrant communities.

Finally, our community continues to demand that the Obama administration end the practice of placing young mothers with children fleeing violence in Central America in detention facilities. Family detention victimizes young mothers and children who are not a threat and have committed no crimes. Further, there are humane alternatives for detention for this vulnerable group.

NETWORK weeps with all who are suffering from violence all over the world. The principles of Catholic Social Teaching teach us to live in solidarity with our neighbors, with empathy for all who are suffering regardless of religion, race, or nationality. Together with the global community, we mourn the attacks in Paris. We pray for the lives that were lost and pray for healing for the injured as well as the families and friends of victims.

We also pray for all victims of violence in other countries including Beirut, Baghdad, and the ongoing violence in Syria. When hearing of these tragedies, we cannot forget the lesson taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan: our neighbor may not be someone who looks like us, speaks our language, or shares our customs. When Pope Francis came to the United States he encouraged Congress to heed the call to welcome the stranger saying:

“Our world is facing a refugee crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Second World War. This presents us with great challenges and many hard decisions. … We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation. To respond in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal.”

For us, the faithful response is to welcome Syrian refugees of all faiths into our country and our communities. We must do this if we truly recognize the sacred call to protect and nourish all life. We must denounce Islamophobia that threatens our Muslim sisers and brothers from any source – from a neighbor in line at the grocery store to members of Congress, governors, and Presidential candidates. Fear cannot and must not be an excuse for inaction, or worse, a rejection of our faithful duty to respond to the urgent needs of our Syrian brothers and sisters. We must live up to the words of Jesus in the Gospel: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in” (Matthew 25:35.)

I invite you to join me and NETWORK members across the country in calling on your senators to welcome refugees by following these steps:

Call 1-888-897-9753 to contact your senior Senator’s office.

When you call, here’s what you might say: 

“Hi, my name is [NAME], and I am a constituent from [CITY]. I’m calling today because I stand with Pope Francis and urge you to welcome refugees from Syria fleeing violence. Please oppose any legislation that attempts to limit access to refugees based on their religion or country of origin.” 

Call 1-888-496-3502 to contact your junior Senator’s office.

When you call, here’s what you might say: 

“Hi, my name is [NAME], and I am a constituent from [CITY]. I’m calling today because I stand with Pope Francis and urge you to welcome refugees from Syria fleeing violence. Please oppose any legislation that attempts to limit access to refugees based on their religion or country of origin.”