Close Raymondville's Notorious
"Tent City" Detention Center

Grassroots Leadership Calls on ICE to Use Alternatives to Detention

 Grassroots Leadership joins organizations from across Texas calling for the closure of the controversial Willacy County Processing Center in Raymondville, Texas.

While called a "Processing Center", it is the nation's largest immigrant detention center, holding more than 3,000 immigrant detainees. The facility is a private prison operated by Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC). The facility has been dubded "Tent City" because most of the "buildings" are Kevlar tents.

We call on the Obama administration, specifically Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and ICE chief John Morton to close the "Tent City" detention center and stop ICE’s overuse of private detention centers. Alternatives to detention tend to be both more humane and less costly. A Vera Institute study 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 with more than $30 a day ICE pays MTC to detainee immigrants at "Tent City".

The Willacy County Processing Center has been racked by a series of allegations of horrendous conditions and abuse, including alleged sexual assaults on female
detainees by guards, reports of detainees being fed rotten and inadequate food, and poor access to medical and mental health care.

Less than 50 miles away from the Wilancy County Processing Center, more than 1,800 detainees are held at the Port Isabel Detention Center (PIDC). The PIDC detainees have been on rolling hunger strike for several months protesting prolonged detention and conditions inside the detention center.

Rama Carty, a detainee who was held at PIDC, has spoken out about conditions in Texas detention centers, saying: "I have conversations with people where I am in custody every day about what is going on in South Texas. I strongly believe that the Rio Grande Valley is at the forefront of numerous humanitarian issues which must be addressed in order to accelerate the evolution of people on this planet."

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