The rule would effectively end the Flores settlement, a landmark 1997 order that established certain standards for family detention centers and a 20-day limit for detaining children.
Bridget Cambria, an attorney and executive director of ALDEA, said the longest-detained family at Berks currently has been there for 54 days. She said federal immigration officials routinely flout the 20-day standard.
“It’s not a campus. It’s a jail,” she said. “If you describe it as a campus that denotes you can leave. You can’t leave Berks.”
She said families have no privacy in rooms that hold six people with a bathroom shielded by a sheet. Families have to wake up when their told to, eat what their told to, and don’t get to make personal decisions about medical care.
“Those decisions are made for them,” Cambria said.
When children run in the facility, “they’re yelled at,” she said. “It’s a facade. It’s a way to make detaining children look good.”
