The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: detention
Judge Orders Release Of Immigrant Children, Mothers From Detention Centers

Judge Orders Release Of Immigrant Children, Mothers From Detention Centers

By Cindy Carcamo, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

A federal judge has ruled that families held in immigration detention facilities must be released after finding that their detention was in serious violation of an earlier court settlement.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in California ruled that children and their mothers — many among the people fleeing from violence in Central America — no longer can be locked up. Gee found that federal officials had violated an 18-year-old court settlement regarding the detention of migrant children.

Gee blasted federal officials in his ruling, writing that children had been held in substandard conditions at two detention centers in Texas.

“It is astonishing that Defendants have enacted a policy requiring such expensive infrastructure without more evidence to show that it would be complaint with an Agreement that has been in effect for nearly 20 years,” Gee wrote.

The ruling is a major setback for Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who opened family detention facilities after a significant increase in children and parents at the U.S.-Mexico border — most from Central America crossing the Southwest border — last summer.

It’s unclear whether Immigration and Customs Enforcement will appeal the ruling. The government is detaining 1,700 parents and children at three detention facilities, two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania.

The judge gave Homeland Security officials until August 3 to devise a plan to release mothers and children.

Photo: Otay Detention Center in California. BBC World Service via Flickr

Pakistani Government Detains Osama Bin Laden Raid Informants

The Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama Bin Laden early last month was a success in part thanks to Pakistanis who helped the Central Intelligence Agency ensure they had their man and that things went smoothly. The Pakistani government, though, always a halfhearted ally on combating terrorism, has responded by arresting these informants, adding them to the list of 35 or so others being held in the government’s investigation of the U.S. incursion:

Pakistan’s detention of five C.I.A. informants, including a Pakistani Army major who officials said copied the license plates of cars visiting Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the weeks before the raid, is the latest evidence of the fractured relationship between the United States and Pakistan. It comes at a time when the Obama administration is seeking Pakistan’s support in brokering an endgame in the war in neighboring Afghanistan. [NYT]