Jane Fonda, Madonna, Javier Bardem and Pedro Pascal are among the Hollywood artists who have joined a petition addressed to Donald Trump’s administration to demand the closure of the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, where ICE has been detaining children and their parents.
“No child should be locked up in an immigration detention center,” begins the letter, which currently has more than 4,000 verified signatures and is also addressed to private prison operator CoreCivic.
“Children detained in immigration detention suffer trauma, neglect and conditions that violate basic standards of health, safety, dignity and human rights,” he continues.
Signatories also include John Legend, Brandi Carlile, Hannah Einbinder, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Wunmi Mosaku, Billy Porter, Keke Palmer, Hasan Minhaj, Katie Couric, Susan Sarandon and others.
More artists call for closure of ICE detention center
About 3,500 people, more than half of them minors, have been detained at the center for migrant families in Dilley, Texas, according to a February report by ProPublica.
The center received a lot of attention because it was where federal authorities sent 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos after arresting him and his father in Minneapolis.
An analysis by this media outlet revealed that some 300 minors sent to Dilley by the Trump Administration remained there for more than a month, in violation of the Flores Agreement, which limits the retention of children to a maximum of 20 days.
The detention of migrant minors in the US has increased sharply during Trump’s term in office. According to the Deportation Data Project, between January and October of this year a monthly average of 170 children were arrested, compared to 25 during the last 16 months of Joe Biden’s administration, reported Agencia EFE.
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