AIC, June 7, 2023 "The American Immigration Council appeared before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Sub-committee on Immigration, Integrity, Security, and Enforcement to address the...
JACOB HAMBURGER AND STEPHEN YALE-LOEHR, June 3, 2023 "With the end of the COVID-19 emergency on May 11, the Title 42 border restrictions have been officially lifted. Although the situation at the...
Jorge Cancino, Univision, June 2, 2023 "The positions taken by lawyers from the Department of Justice (DOJ) show that, contrary to the campaign discourse and the one defended during the first months...
Weill Cornell Medicine, June 2, 2023 "Recent uncertainties regarding the legal status of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program underscore the urgency for policymakers to reassess...
This document is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on 06/05/2023 "BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION America is more than a place; it is an idea...
University of California Press
"Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America, by Philip G. Schrag
About the Book
“I worked in a trailer that ICE had set aside for conversations between the women and the attorneys. While we talked, their children, most of whom seemed to be between three and eight years old, played with a few toys on the floor. It was hard for me to get my head around the idea of a jail full of toddlers, but there they were.”
"For decades, advocates for refugee children and families have fought to end the U.S. government’s practice of jailing children and families for months, or even years, until overburdened immigration courts could rule on their claims for asylum. Baby Jails is the history of that legal and political struggle. Philip G. Schrag, the director of Georgetown University’s asylum law clinic, takes readers through thirty years of conflict over which refugee advocates resisted the detention of migrant children. The saga began during the Reagan administration when 15-year-old Jenny Lisette Flores languished in a Los Angeles motel that the government had turned into a makeshift jail by draining the swimming pool, barring the windows, and surrounding the building with barbed wire. What became known as the Flores Settlement Agreement was still at issue years later, when the Trump administration resorted to the forced separation of families after the courts would not allow long-term jailing of the children. Schrag provides recommendations for the reform of a system that has brought anguish and trauma to thousands of parents and children. Provocative and timely, Baby Jails exposes the ongoing struggle between the U.S. government and immigrant advocates over the duration and conditions of confinement of children who seek safety in America."