215,000 Demand Dilley Shutdown as Artists and Doctors Unite Against Family Detention

Janelle Monáe, Spike Lee, Jodie Foster, and a battalion of pediatricians join growing coalition calling on CoreCivic and DHS to release children now

WASHINGTON — The names keep coming.

Janelle Monáe. Jodie Foster. Spike Lee. Joan Baez. Quinta Brunson. Jessica Alba. One by one, they added their signatures to an open letter demanding the federal government shut down the Dilley Immigration Processing Center — a CoreCivic-run family detention facility in Dilley, Texas where children and their parents are held in immigration custody.

More than 215,000 people have now signed the letter, which calls not just for the closure of Dilley but for an end to the detention of children and families nationwide — and the return of those already detained to the communities from which they were taken.

The campaign, organized under the National Coalition to End Child and Family Detention, is not a celebrity vanity project. Alongside the artists is a medical corps — pediatricians, OBGYNs, pulmonologists, clinical psychologists — who have put their names and credentials behind an argument that detention itself is the harm.

Ryan Matlow, a child clinical psychologist and clinical associate professor at Stanford School of Medicine, is among the signatories. So is Julie M. Linton, a pediatrician at the University of South Carolina. And Josephine Urbina, double board-certified in OB/GYN and complex family planning. The roster of medical professionals lending their names reads like a brief from the American Academy of Pediatrics: children do not belong in cages, and the science says so.

Conditions at Dilley that track with what advocates have documented at detention facilities for years — refusals to provide clean water, food contaminated with worms, dangerous medical neglect, sleep deprivation, denial of legal counsel, and retaliation against families who protest.

Carly Pérez Fernández, communications director at Detention Watch Network, called jailing kids and stripping parents of their right to keep them safe is “unconscionable,” adding that no one is safe in ICE custody — especially children

“Childhood is a fleeting period of time that has a tremendous impact on setting the foundation for a person’s lifelong well-being – it must be protected,” said said Pérez Fernández. “Jailing kids and stripping parents of their fundamental right to keep them safe is unconscionable. No one is safe in ICE custody, especially children. We must continue to unite across the country to demand no more abuse and death at the hands of ICE, shut down Dilley, and end the policy of family detention once and for all,” she added.

The open letter is still accepting signatures via Change.org.

CoreCivic, the private prison contractor that operates the Dilley facility, and the Department of Homeland Security have not responded publicly to the campaign’s demands.

Dilley has been a flashpoint in the immigration detention debate for years. The facility — formally called the South Texas Family Residential Center — is the largest family detention center in the country, with a capacity of roughly 2,400 people. Under the current administration’s enforcement posture, family detention has expanded, not contracted.

The coalition behind the closure campaign includes Oxfam America, Amnesty International USA, the Children’s Defense Fund-Texas, the American Friends Service Committee, the National Immigration Project, and Tsuru for Solidarity, among others.

The letter’s demands are simple and blunt: close Dilley immediately. Return children and families to their homes. Implement humane alternatives to detention. End child imprisonment.

“Childhood is a fleeting period of time that has a tremendous impact on setting the foundation for a person’s lifelong well-being,” Pérez Fernández said. “It must be protected.”

215,000 people — and counting — agree.

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