Each day, over 30,000 people are housed within detention centers across the United States. The New York-based Detention Watch Network says that last year, over 276,000 immigrants were deported. Deportations have increased significantly since 1996, when laws became much more punitive. A criminal charge results in jail time and guarantees deportation of non-citizen immigrants, regardless […]
Author Archives: Luissana Santibanez
Luissana Santibanez is a SOROS Justice Fellowship grantee and an immigrant rights community organizer. She works with Texans United for Families, a coalition that aims to close down a privately owned immigrant detention center where children and parents are incarcerated for non-criminal immigration violations. Santibañez is the co-founder of Madres en Defensa de la Educacion de Nuestras/os Hijas/os. She became involved in immigration detention advocacy after her mother was detained at a Corrections Corporation of America center in Houston, Texas.
Kathleen Sullivan is the Detention Project Manager and Senior Attorney with the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., CLINIC. CLINIC assists groups across the country with improving their practice of immigration law and client representation. The network of organizations supported by CLINIC serves 400,000 low-income immigrants each year.
Andrea Black is the Coordinator of the Detention Watch Network, a coalition of groups around the nation working to reform US detention and deportation policies. The Detention Watch Network believes that detention should be used only as a last resort by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
