This week Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officially announced its plans to open a new family detention center in Dilley, Texas, to house mostly women and children. This will be the fourth “residential center” in the country after facilities in Artesia, New Mexico and Karnes City, Texas were opened in response to the recent influx of unaccompanied child migrants, joining a long-standing family facility in Leesport, Pennsylvania . If the existing facilities teach us anything about the way women migrants and asylum seekers are treated in this country, Dilley will be a money-making machine for the private prison industry and a hot bed of human rights violations.

In response to the treatment they have witnessed in Artesia and Karnes, 126 women’s and ...