FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Anna Núñez, ACLU of Texas, 713.942.8146 x103; [email protected]
Houston – The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) today announced their preliminary observations from a three-day visit to the Texas-Mexico border, where it sought to assess the human rights situation of unaccompanied children and families who have crossed the southern border. Their findings reinforced the view of many Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) opposed to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s response, which has favored needless mass detention, denial of due process, and accelerated deportation in apparent violation of U.S. human rights obligations.
On Monday, during the first day of the delegation’s visit to the Rio Grande Valley, ACLU of Texas Executive Director Terri Burke was one of six NGO leaders who addressed the commission at a hearing in the small town of San Juan near the border.
“We clearly have failed these children and families who have endured traumatic journeys to the U.S. to escape violence in their home countries,” said Burke. “Instead of seeking ways to provide protections, proper legal counsel, and full and fair immigration proceedings, our government resorted to warehousing children and mothers in detention centers and expediting their removal back to the violence they fled. It’s time the Department of Homeland Security reverse course and commit to ensuring proper legal counsel and to utilizing less costly alternatives to detention, which wastes taxpayer money and subjects these refugees to unnecessary damage and harms.”
At the request of the ACLU and other groups, the Commission will hold a hearing on October 27, 2014, on the “situation of human rights of migrant and refugee children and families in the United States.” The hearing, which the U.S. government will be invited to attend, will be held at the Commission’s headquarters in Washington D.C., 9 – 10 a.m.
View the IACHR statement on its preliminary findings (PDF): http://aclutx.org/download/193
View the request to IACHR from the ACLU and other groups for a thematic hearing (PDF): http://aclutx.org/download/192
View more information on unaccompanied immigrant children and families, part of the ACLU’s September 2014 report to the United Nations Human Rights Council (PDF): https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/aclu_final_upr_submission_2014.pdf#page=12
