News Item
"The Journal News" featured Law Professor Vanessa Merton in "Housing separated immigrant children in Westchester a long-standing practice, advocates say"
The revelation this week that immigrant children separated from their parents at the U.S./Mexico border are being held 2,000 miles away in Westchester County follows a long-standing practice, immigration advocates said.
Local youth facilities like The Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry and Lincoln Hall in Somers have been housing unaccompanied young immigrants for years under a contract with the federal government, they said.
And it's also been standard practice for immigration officials to detain immigrants anywhere in the country, often miles from where they were taken into custody.
“Understand that it’s a very common, longstanding practice for ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) to move people all over the country, long distances from where they have families, for example," said Vanessa Merton, director of the Immigrant Justice Clinic at Pace University. "As long as they are in custody, this is not something unusual for them.”
