Texas Senate Tentatively Approves Bill Licensing Immigrant Detention Sites As Childcare Centers

AUSTIN, TX — Critics of for-profit detention centers are decrying Tuesday's initial approval of a bill by the Texas Senate that would allow the licensing of immigration detention centers as child care facilities.

The measure was approved down party lines in a 20-11 vote, with Republicans voting in favor. Formally named Senate Bill 1018, the measure authored by Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola, Texas, would allow the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to create exemptions to their existing General Residential Operations code to license family detention centers in Karnes City and Dilley as childcare facilities.

The net effect would be prolonging the length of detention for children of undocumented immigrants detained by federal officials, opponents have argued. The bill, if passed, also would render obsolete prior court rulings raising questions related to the legality of the two South Texas detention facilities.

The bill was opposed by pediatricians, children’s rights advocates, social workers, and legal services providers who have worked in the family detention centers, advocates noted.

“This is a disgrace,” said Barbara Hines, a fellow at the Emerson Collective and former clinical professor of law at the University of Texas, in a prepared statement. “Today, Texas Senators sided with private prison corporations over the interests of children.”

Dr. Laura Guerra-Cardus, deputy director of the Children's Defense Fund Texas, also decried the Senate vote: “The Children’s Defense Fund of Texas is deeply disappointed with the Texas Senate’s passage of SB 1018 today,” she said. “This reprehensible vendor bill puts a rubber stamp on the damaging incarceration of legally present, asylum-seeking children and families. In so doing, the legislators who supported this bill are not only hurting children, they are putting Texas at risk for more long and expensive legal battles over the violation of the human rights of children. Drafted by the very corporations who will benefit, this bill is repellent and inhumane. Texas will bear responsibility for the continued psychological harm to children fleeing violence who will be jailed in these facilities.”

Another disapproving voice was that of Marisa Bono, the Southwest regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

"If we don't stand for children, we don't stand for much," Bono said. "The Texas Senate yet again ignored overwhelming opposition from faith, legal, and immigrant communities to advance a bill that discriminates against some of the most vulnerable children in Texas. Texas claims it wants to do right by Texas foster care children one day, then lowers standards for refugee children the next. It's textbook hypocrisy.”

Officials at Grass Roots Leadership noted the bill was created at the behest of private prison firm GEO Group, as a report by the Associated Press found. The AP report, the privae prison company stands to benefit financially if the bill gains full passage.

One Republican lawmaker acknowledged the input provided by GEO in crafting the bill: "I've known the lady who's their lobbyist for a long time, State Rep. John Raney, a Republican from the rural town of Bryan told AP. "That's where the legislation came from. We don't make things up. People bring things to us and ask us to help."

Another report released last month by Texans for Public Justice revealed that private prison companies are paying lobbyists $480,000 to advocate for them in front of Texas lawmakers as they consider the proposal to license lucrative immigration jails, Grassroots Leadership officials noted.

GEO Group had previously told its investors that attaining licensing would allow it to detain children for longer periods of time: “Presently, the center operates as a short-term processing facility and this licensing process will allow for longer lengths of stay,” he is reported as having said.

The effort to pass legislation aimed at licensing family detention centers as child care facilities comes after a successful lawsuit from Grassroots Leadership and women detained with their children at the Karnes and Dilley detention camps. In December, Judge Karin Crump of the 250th District Court invalidated the Texas regulation that allowed for the licensure of Karnes and Dilley, officials noted.

Karnes and Dilley Detention Centers opened in 2014 and have been plagued with reports of inadequate medical care, sexual abuse, poor conditions, and exasperating the impact of trauma on the children inside,, according to Grassroots Leadership. Licenses would not provide oversight to the poor conditions, but rather lead to the prolonged detention of the families inside, officials at the nonprofit contend.

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