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| Journalist Emilio Gutierrez-Soto, right, and his son Oscar during an interview with CBC's Adrienne Arsenault at the El Paso Processing Centre, a U.S. immigration detention facility |
Over the past year, immigrant and civil rights groups have witnessed a dramatic increase of immigration enforcement and detention due to the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy along the border. This includes the practice of family separation, a policy that has left hundreds of children in child detention centers across the country.
Shelters that were at 30 percent capacity one year ago are now at 90 percent.
[1]According to a Health and Human Services official from the Obama administration:
“The closer they get to 100 percent, the less ability they will have to address anything unforeseen. Even if there’s not a sudden influx, they will be running out of capacity soon unless something changes.”
Thanks to dogged reporting by journalists along our southern border, we learned earlier this year about children and families being separated at the border. But that reporting was mainly from outside the detention centers, because the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement routinely denies or limits journalists access to child detention centers, arguing that they need to protect the privacy of children. But professional journalists are capable of reporting on children responsibly, and the government could easily negotiate with them on ways to do so.
Demand that journalists have access to detention centers so that the American people and the world can see the permanent harm the Trump administration’s policies are having on children and families in the name of our government.
Sign the petition today!
These shelters are not the solution but in order to hold the government accountable we need to have access to them.
Since May of 2017, the number of migrant children in custody has jumped from 2,400 to 12,800 as of September. The administration’s recent investment in “tent cities,” which provide harsh living conditions for children, is horrifying and unacceptable. The Office of Refugee Resettlement routinely denies or limits journalists access to child detention centers, arguing the need to protect the privacy of children. But professional journalists are capable of reporting on children responsibly. We demand that journalists be given immediate increased access to detention centers―to honor our constitutional right of freedom of the press and to ensure government transparency and accountability. Only through our free press will we begin to understand and be able to address the humanitarian crisis at our southern border.
