Rights Groups Ask UN Panel To Shut Down Immigrant Detention Centers in US

FEATURING ERIKA ALMIRON – Sixty human rights and immigrant rights organizations in the US have signed on to a letter to a United Nations panel asking the international body to shut down so-called family detention centers that house undocumented immigrants. Under President Obama, undocumented immigrants accused of the civil offense of being in the US without papers have been increasingly imprisoned in a number of centers. In many cases whole families including very young children and newborns are incarcerated. The physical and mental toll on these families, many of whom have escaped traumatic circumstances from their home countries, is severe.

The U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention visited the US earlier this month and in its report wrote, “Mandatory detention of migrants, especially asylum-seekers, is against international law standards.”

Find more at www.vamosjuntos.org. Read the open letter to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention HERE.

Erika Almiron, Executive Director of Juntos, a Philadelphia-based grassroots organization.