Ana, a legal resident, recounts her time spent in a child immigrant detention center. Although having a short time there, the memory stays with her far longer.
Por CÉSAR SANDOVAL
EL NUEVO SOL
Every year it seems that there is an increase in the amount of unattended immigrant children being put into detention centers. Last year, there were over 122,000 immigrant children detained and referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. To put this in context, before last year, the highest number of children detained was 69,488 back in 2019. Seventy-two percent of these children were above the age of 14 and 66% of the children for the year were boys. With overcrowding, sometimes unsanitary conditions, and separation from family, the experience is horrible for these children.
Here we have a now adult Ana who had through go through the experience as a child now multiple years later recounting her experience in a detention center.
A key point to point out in the story is that times have changed from 2006 to modern day detention centers in addition to the fact that all detention centers can be very different. That being said, in terms of a stay in a detention center there does seem to be a general agreement that this experience is an average experience for a child entering a detention center unaccompanied. A three-day stay is the legal limit to keep a child in custody. Although it happened in this way this situation does not always play out in such a manner with other UC (unaccompanied Children), stays can be longer according to Managing Attorney of the Young Center Los Angeles Office, Shantel Vachani. There can be many contributing factors such as the influx of immigrants being sent detention centers such as cases in which migrant caravans reach the U.S. border.
This is just one experience of a child being put into a detention center from the hundreds of thousands every year, alone and confused as to what might be next. It is unfortunate to say, but this may be a tamer look into such an experience with many sufferings longer periods of time in filth, sickness, and overcrowding. As Ana stated, “It wasn’t as bad as the recent ones.” Moving forward changes need to be made even if not abolition of such as system there is a great report by the Youth Center as to how such a system could more ethically continue with the interest of children being put first as they do not deserve to be put through traumatizing events for a better future. The report “Reimagining Children’s Immigration Proceedings: A Roadmap for an Entirely New System Centered Around Children” which depicts a system that starts off with the fundamentals of putting a child’s safety at the forefront and keeping them with family as being separated creates more problems for a child in such an environment.
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