Los Angeles, CA (March 8, 2023) – On Monday, the New York Times exposed the Biden Administration’s hideous plans to revive the detention of migrant families. Just two years ago, Biden had condemned and stopped the practice. Carol Anne Donohoe, managing attorney for Al Otro Lado’s Family Reunification Project, issued the following statement:


“As an attorney who once represented over a hundred mothers, fathers, and children held in the infamous Berks County detention center, I am appalled at the news that Biden is considering resurrecting his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama’s heinous practice of imprisoning asylum-seeking families. I’ll never be able to erase the memories I have of a detained mother holding her 12-day-old newborn, the bloody t-shirt of a toddler who’d been vomiting for days, and a little boy who entered Berks with his mother at age one and did not exit that brick-walled prison until he was three years old.

Once the people of this country accepted the words ‘family detention’ under Obama, the door was left open for Trump to take it to the next level with family separation. No matter the campaign promises, there seems to be no limit to what either party will do to our most vulnerable in the name of so-called ‘deterrence’.

One short month ago, Berks County detention center, this country’s first and last family detention center, finally closed its doors. For Biden to suggest that family prisons may soon reopen is not only another broken promise, but is an affront to the parents and children who suffered beyond those doors. Al Otro Lado firmly and unequivocally denounces any attempt by the Biden Administration to resurrect family detention.”