Today we will be picking up on our discussion of the US immigration policy that deals with children and families in detention centers. Last time we read about Fega, a Nigerian girl who was kept in detention for over a year after being abandoned by her parents. Today we will be looking at the Hutto Facility in Texas, were families with children are kept pending their asylum applications or deportation hearings.
As part of the Bush administration policy to end what they termed the “catch and release’” of undocumented immigrants, the U.S. government opened the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in May 2006 as a prototype family detention facility. The facility is a former medium-security prison in central Texas operated by CCA, the largest private prison operator in the country. The facility houses immigrant children and their parents from all over the world who are awaiting asylum hearings or deportation proceedings.
As these events unfold, the film explores the government rationale for family detention, conditions at the facility, collateral damage, and the role (and limits) of community activism in bringing change. The film leads viewers to consider how core American rights and values – due process, presumption of innocence, upholding the family structure as the basic unit of civil society, and America as a refuge of last resort – should apply to immigrants, particularly children.
As we watch will need to come up with three open-ended questions which you will bring up in discussion at the end of the film. These questions will be for a grade.
No comments:
Post a Comment