ICE releases hundreds of women, children from detention

• Release of mothers, children from detention comes a year after surge of Central American migrants
• All of those released were being held at family detention centers in Texas, Pennsylvania
• New report also says the DHS has been illegally deporting thousands of unaccompanied minors

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has released some 200 Central Americans, mostly women and children, from family-detention centers since last Friday. The move is part of a sweeping series of changes the agency has made in recent months to when and for how long families seeking asylum are being detained.

The releases follow a long campaign by human-rights groups, since last year's spike in migration from Central America, to end the Department of Homeland Security's policy of detaining families as a way to discourage migration.

The number of women and children crossing the border from Central America has dropped sharply this year, after about 120,000 crossed illegally in fiscal year 2014, as The Arizona Republic reported in the series "Pipeline of Children."

In a related development Tuesday, a new federal audit suggested that Border Patrol agents and Customs and Border Protection officers may have illegally deported thousands of unaccompanied Mexican children under 14 years old over the past five years.

Eleanor Acer, director of refugee protection at Human Rights First, also said the new report by the Government Accountability Office that border agents aren't properly screening children before deporting them was "disturbing, but not surprising, given a long history of deficiencies in screening" by CBP.

OUR SPECIAL REPORT: Pipeline of children - a border crisis

Acer and others from immigrant-rights groups welcomed the releases of the mothers and children, but they called for closing the family-detention centers entirely.

"It is a huge step forward that families, some held for months or even more than a year, are finally being released from detention," Acer said. "At the same time, it's important to note that they are continuing to send new families into these detention centers."

Tuesday morning, speaking to the House Judiciary Committee, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson laid out changes ICE is making or has made since May in handling detained families.

He said that he directed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to speed up interviews of families seeking asylum to determine whether they have a credible fear of being harmed if they are deported. Staffing shortages have led to months-long backlogs.

Johnson also said that ICE has set standards for establishing bond amounts "at a level that is reasonable and realistic, taking into account ability to pay ... flight risk and public safety." Immigration attorneys have said that bonds were being set at anywhere from $5,000 to more than $20,000, amounts that most detained families can't realistically meet.

Johnson also said DHS has:

Begun reviewing cases of any families detained more than 90 days to see whether they should be released under supervision, with priority given to those held longest.

Ended the practice of using "general deterrence" as a justification for detaining families.

Taken steps to improve conditions at the centers, along with improving families' access to legal counsel, social workers and medical care.

Agreed to appoint a federal advisory committee of outside experts to advise ICE and DHS on family-detention issues.

As of Monday, ICE officials said that 2,101 people were being held at two family-detention facilities in Texas, and 71 at a family-detention center in Pennsylvania. Immigration attorneys working at the centers said that about 200 people had been released in recent days. ICE did not confirm or dispute the release numbers reported by attorneys.

In a press statement, ICE confirmed that newly arriving families are being detained, but said that "going forward, ICE will generally not detain mothers with children, absent a threat to public safety or national security, if they have received a positive finding for credible or reasonable fear and the individual has provided a verifiable residential address."

Melissa Crow, legal director of the American Immigration Council, a Washington immigrant-rights group, noted that most women being released were being forced to wear GPS monitoring devices on their ankles.

"Ankle bracelets are a huge impediment to people integrating into our country and pursuing their day-to-day lives," Crow said. "They are a much more restrictive alternative than we think is necessary, particularly in these cases where most of the women have very solid claims for asylum and every incentive to appear for their hearings."

Dismissing the monitoring devices as "unnecessary and dehumanizing," Silky Shah, co-director of Detention Watch Network, said "it is time to close all family-detention centers."

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office released a study looking at how well Homeland Security and its Customs and Border Protection unit screened and provided care for detained unaccompanied children.

By law, Border Patrol agents and Customs officers turn detained children from countries other than Mexico or Canada over to the Department of Health and Human Services. Children from Mexico or Canada can be deported directly back to their countries. But, under a 2008 trafficking-victims law, agents first have to question children, and they are barred from sending back trafficking victims, those at risk of being trafficked, those with a credible fear of persecution, and those who can't make an independent decision about returning.

But even though CBP's own regulations say that children "under age 14 are presumed generally unable to make an independent decision," the GAO said that CBP's data and a random sample of case files showed that between 2009 and last year, CBP sent back 93 percent of Mexican unaccompanied children under 14 "without documenting the basis for decisions." That amounted to more than 6,800 children, according to data in the GAO report.

The GAO report said, rather diplomatically, that agents "made inconsistent screening decisions, had varying levels of awareness about ... screening criteria, and did not consistently document the rationales for their decisions."

Even when agents document them, their rationales can be troublesome. Earlier this year, the American Immigration Lawyers Association challenged separate incidents in which Border Patrol agents wrote that children told them they had crossed the border to look for work. In two separate cases, the child who allegedly said this was 3 years old. In another, the child was 11 days old.

CBP did not respond directly to questions about the deportations of children under 14, but provided a statement that it is reviewing its screening process, and has begun "an aggressive training program" for agents on complying with the trafficking law. CBP also said it is working to improve how cases are tracked and documented.