New York, NY—It has been reported that the Trump administration is reopening multiple detention centers to detain immigrant families in addition to ICE targeting immigrant families. ICE also continues to build its deportation infrastructure with the reopening of a massive detention center just outside of New York City. America has already experienced the horrors of detaining children and families during the first Trump administration, a policy that was walked back after fierce public opposition.
Murad Awawdeh, President and CEO, New York Immigration Coalition:
“Putting children in jail is wrong. The alarming return of family detention, which was widely rejected during the last Trump administration, is an extremist expansion of Trump’s already unprecedented and cruel detention and deportation agenda. The far-reaching trauma that children and families will experience because of Trump’s actions is something that will reverberate for generations to come – we will never be able to fully quantify or even comprehend its harm. Quite simply, family detention will be a stain on America’s human rights legacy. All elected officials – and Americans – must stand up and unequivocally reject any form of family detention.”