News Story (Texas)
Elise Foley
Huffington Post
April 11, 2016
READ THE FULL STORY HERE
Tags: Children & Juvenile, Deportation, Detention Centers, Immigration Process
Organizations mentioned/involved: RAICES (Texas)
DETAILS
bella is part of a massive effort to bring in volunteers — attorneys, legal assistants and more — to help women and children in immigrant detention centers. More than 700 volunteers have traveled to facilities in Texas to work long hours for at least a week, helping nearly 8,000 families start the process to seek asylum, according to the CARA Pro Bono Project.
The attorneys and other volunteers have donated more than $6.75 million of their time, the group estimated — a staggering figure for what they say is a staggering problem: women and children being held in immigrant detention.
“To me, it’s really sad that we’re having to do this at all, because family detention is not something that should even exist,” said Dree Collopy, an attorney who visited the Texas facilities in February.