Sample letter opposing immigrant family detention:

Please send your version to President Obama, Secretary Janet Napolitano, and James T. Hayes, Jr., Director of Detention and Removal Operations

I am writing to ask you to end the policy of detaining immigrant and asylum-seeking families in restrictive settings. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) currently holds families at two detention centers, the Berks County Family Care Shelter in Pennsylvania and the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility in Texas. While the T. Don Hutto facility has been the more controversial of the two, the fact is that family detention requires unnecessarily restrictive settings to control families in immigration proceedings. During the last administration, ICE has proposed three new family detention centers across the country whose bids remain active under your review.

Congress has repeatedly called for families to be held in “home-like” settings if at all, and voice objection to the prison-like facilities used at the Hutto, and have mandated that ICE use the least restrictive method when detaining children.

I join the voices of others who oppose family detention on the grounds that children and their families should not be incarcerated when more humane and less-costly alternatives exist. There are alternatives to family detention that keep families together and out of prison-like detention centers. ICE should:

• release families on personal recognizance,
• use of reasonable personal bonds, and
• use limited supervised release programs.

In a study commissioned by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the Vera Institute found that more than 90% of immigrants on a supervised release program attended their immigration hearings. The average cost of a supervision program is $12 a day compared to reportedly over $200 a day to detain a person at Hutto.

Family detention is not just a shameful policy. Family detention contradicts family values and fiscal responsibility, values that are fundamental to most Americans.
I urge you to take measures to end immigrant family detention in its current form and to implement a non-restrictive, humane standard of custody for families in immigration proceedings.

Sincerely,

P.O. Box 36006, Charlotte, NC 28236-6006
shipping: 400 Clarice Avenue, Suite 130 Charlotte, NC 28204

voice: 704.332.3090
fax: 704.332.0445