LAREDO, Texas – One day after Texas Democratic lawmakers visited a Dilley immigration family detention center and two people were arrested during a protest near the facility, another member of Congress addressed the facility’s impact in his district.
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat based in Laredo and serving Texas’ 28th District, discussed the impact of people detained in Dilley, Texas, who are later sent to the Laredo Holding Institute, a prominent shelter in the city.
Cuellar appeared at the shelter Thursday afternoon alongside Laredo City Councilwoman Melissa Cigarroa and Michael Smith, the Laredo Holding Institute’s executive director.
“ICE should think about what they’re doing here because they’re catching people, some of them, that are already in (immigration) court, trying to follow the right thing,” Cuellar said.
“And then, they’re sent to a detention center (in Dilley) for ‘X’ amount of time — limited because of their kids. It’s a family center," Cuellar continued. “And then, they’re released at a border community, and then they start the same process — the same process for many of them — that they had already. ‘Why are you doing this process again where they already had a legal process?’”
Cuellar said Thursday that the people detained in Dilley are a mixture of “recent (U.S.-Mexico border) crossers” and people who have already lived in the United States.
According to a Wednesday news release from Cuellar’s office, ICE began “increasing the number of families moving from the Dilley facility” to shelters along the U.S.-Mexico border last week.
The congressman’s office also claimed that ICE planned to send dozens more people (between “45 to 60″ per day) to the Laredo Holding Institute over the next few weeks.
Smith said the institute’s shelter is “comfortable” housing 150 people, but can “squeeze” as many as 250 people on a given day.
“We’ve (the shelter) been around since 1860. We do a lot of good work, and we haven’t forgotten our roots,” Smith said, in part. “When we accepted the responsibility to receive migrants (and) asylum seekers, we didn’t forget what we were doing in the local community. ... We just added it onto our shoulders.”
“I’m incredibly proud of the City of Laredo, I serve as a council member here, (that) our private institutions (and) organizations that take on this incredibly important mission: to keep families together, to treat people with dignity and to help them conform to our immigration process,” Cigarroa said.
Fellow U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro — who was among the lawmakers to visit Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, Adrian Alexander — said Wednesday that the Dilley facility was on lockdown to prevent the springing up of potential protests.
In a statement to KSAT sent Wednesday evening, an ICE spokesperson denied Castro’s claim that the facility was on lockdown and that ICE would “never” deny medical care to immigrants.
On Thursday, Cuellar referred to language he suggested in a piece of legislation years ago that addressed detainee treatment.
“I also added very strict language that kids or adults should get medical care, food — whatever they need there — clothing, education also,” Cuellar said, in part. “There’s supposed to all get that in there, if they follow the law. ... I hope they are doing that.”
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