Press Room

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The best way to serve our community is through the sharing of knowledge. Our organization has been featured in various news outlets covering immigration issues. Please see below for our latest media coverage and good sources of immigration news.

SEPARATED FAMILIES PROJECT

Read articles about events that sparked life into our separated family project.

Haitian Migrants Met With Force at the US Border

Thousands of Haitian migrants are being met with force as they try to reach the U.S. after a series of disasters struck their homeland.

09/22/2021

Philly’s ICE field office is flouts its own agency’s guidance, putting lives in danger | Opinion

People navigating their immigration case should be permitted to return home to their families and stay in the community and not remain behind bars in immigration detention

www.penncapital-star.com
August 8, 2021

‘It just feels surreal’: Family reunites after father’s detention at York County Prison

(York) — When Alfredo Carmona’s family found out on July 28 that he was getting tested for COVID-19 and his commissary account was shut off, they feared the worst.

Carmona, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee at York County Prison, was on the transfer list. The agency, which is ending its contract with the prison, had been releasing some detainees but sending others to out-of-state prisons. Before detainees are transferred, they get a virus test and their account is closed.

www.witf.org
August 6, 2021

Asylum-Seekers Are Entering The U.S. Again — But Many More Migrants Are Left Behind

Sandra Zuniga and her teenaged son, Elder, are among the lucky ones.

Earlier this week, the Honduran migrants walked across the international bridge from the infamous migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, received a notice to appear in U.S. immigration court, and settled into a cozy condo in Brownsville, Texas.

www.npr.prg
March 6th, 2021

Berks detention center is now empty, but will it stay that way?

The Berks County detention center, long the target of activists who condemned it as barbaric, is now empty of the immigrant families that it confined for two decades.

The question is whether it will stay that way.

www.inquirer.prg
March 2, 2021

Unaccompanied Immigrant Children Say They’re Being Held Inside An Overcrowded Facility Without Showers

Attorneys who visited a Border Patrol tent facility in Texas for unaccompanied immigrant minors who recently crossed the border said some of the children were held for as many as eight days in crowded areas without showers or the ability to call their families.


www.buzzfeednews.com
March 14, 2021

Texas family detention centers expected to transform into rapid-processing hubs

The Biden administration is preparing to convert its immigrant family detention centers in South Texas into Ellis Island-style rapid-processing hubs that will screen migrant parents and children with a goal of releasing them into the United States within 72 hours, according to Department of Homeland Security draft plans obtained by The Washington Post.

www.washingtonpost.com
March 4, 2021

Berks County denies Reading Eagle request seeking details about residential center proposal

Berks County officials have denied access to documents pertaining to a proposal for the Berks County Residential Center.

At a meeting last week, the commissioners approved sending a letter of support for a white paper proposal from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the Bern Township center.

www.readingeagle.com
Mar 5, 2021

Biden’s Executive Orders and Their Impact on Thousands of Pennsylvania Immigrants

Since the Biden administration took office, Executive Orders (EO) on immigration have been rolling out, reviewing and undoing some of the previous administration’s policies. Each of these EOs has widespread repercussions on different immigrant communities and families living inside and outside the United States. As the White House reviews or studies immigration policies, activists for immigrants throughout Pennsylvania hope for positive reforms from the Biden administration.

www.natlawreview.com
February 23, 2021

Joint Letter to HHS and CDC on Orders Authorizing Border Expulsions

As organizations that represent and advocate for migrants, refugees, and immigrant children as well as organizations committed to science-based governmental decision-making, we write to express our grave concern about reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have decided to continue for now the widely discredited and illegal misuse of public health authority started by the administration of former President Donald Trump to advance discriminatory immigration policy objectives.

www.hrw.org
February 22, 2021

Human Rights First Partners with Dechert LLP, Aldea PJC to Provide Representation to Refugee Families Detained in Pennsylvania

Washington, D.C.—Human Rights First today announced that it will partner with Dechert LLP and Aldea – The People’s Justice Center to provide free legal representation to refugee families detained at Berks County Residential Facility, a family detention facility in Pennsylvania.

humanrightsfirst.org
July 24, 2018

TWO BOYS SUE THE U.S. GOVERNMENT FOR SEPARATING THEM FROM THEIR FATHERS

INSIDE THE HEARTLAND International Children’s Rescue Center in Chicago, Illinois, two young boys sit and wait. One is 15 years old. The other is 9. Their fathers are more than a thousand miles away, at two for-profit detention centers on the border.

Ryan Devereaux
June 22 2018, 12:58 p.m.

‘He cried and hugged me’: Brazilian still separated from son

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Twenty-six days after being apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border with his son, a Brazilian man in detention says he has no idea when he may see his 9-year-old, who he fears is distraught and having difficulty communicating because he only speaks Portuguese.

Peter Prengman
June 22, 2018