Thanks to Jose Luis Benavides for passing on this update from inside the Artesia detention center. It reminds me of the OAKDALE, Louisiana detention center set up in the pine woods of central Louisiana in the 1980s.  Central American detainees were flown and then bused to Oakdale from Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington DC and other areas where they had family and community. Oakdale was a 4-hour drive from the nearest metro area (New Orleans) and there was not a single immigration attorney in the state who spoke Spanish or knew anything about the wars, violence and human rights abuses in Central America at the time. For a great book about this earlier immigration crisis, see:

Other People’s Blood: U.S. Immigration Prisons In The Reagan Decade, by Robert S. Kahn**(see below for more)

The Artesia Experience (Noble & Vrapi)