When the first photo of 5-year-old Liam Ramos went viral in January, it became an instant symbol of the Trump administration’s mass-deportation campaign: his blue bunny hat, his Spider-Man backpack, his hunched shoulders, his scared eyes as ICE detained him and his father outside their home in a Minneapolis suburb.The second photo of Liam, a week later, enraged people who were now invested in his story: Lying on his father’s lap at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, about 70 miles south of San Antonio, Texas, he looked pale and lethargic. His eyes were open a tiny slit. His mother told reporters that Liam had a fever, was vomiting, and refused to eat.What struck me about the second image, and his mother’s update, was how familiar his transformation was. I’ve visited Dilley several times, and have seen many children go from bright-eyed to listless.With his move to Dilley, Liam became part of an ongoing national experiment in detaining immigrant families. George W. Bush’s administration briefly used the practice to provide respite to asylum seekers who had just crossed the border and had no plans for where to go next. But ICE officials soon argued that family detention should be used as a deterrent. In a former medium-security prison surrounded by razor wire north of Austin, young children and their parents wore jumpsuits and were confined to cells for up to 12 hours a day; it closed in 2009 after lawsuits and government inspections showed that children there were sick and malnourished.The Obama administration eventually opened Dilley on a remote patch of Texas flatland where temperatures can hit 90 degrees even in December. Its open-air layout of trailers was supposed to be more humane. But for years now, in interviews and court filings, families have described an emotionally crushing atmosphere, with revolting food, foul water, and a dangerous lack of medical care. They say bright bedroom lights that never turn off make it almost impossible to sleep, compounding their misery.[J. Weston Phippen: Is it an immigration detention facility or a child-care center?]In 2016, a government advisory panel recommended that ICE end the practice of family detention, and instead use monitoring programs that allow people with pending asylum cases to settle and work in the United States. But under Donald Trump, the agency has twice backtracked on plans to do that, arguing that housing children at Dilley is safe and necessary in order… [TheTopNews] Read More.
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