To David Sinski, Vice President of Heartland Alliance, Executive Director of Heartland Human Care Services:

We, citizens of the community of the City of Chicago and the Chicagoland area, legally recognized or not;

we, who will not suffer our fellow human beings, members of our community, no matter how recently they have entered it, whether by their own decision or not, to be held against their will and without their express wish, to be segregated and hidden away from the rest of the community, to have their personal information and their families’ and loved ones’ personal information shared with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal agency whose mandate and actions amount to nothing less than kidnapping, blackmail, and ethnic cleansing, to be separated from their families and loved ones under terms dictated by ICE and allied agencies, to be denied their natural right to freedom of movement;

we ask that Heartland Alliance and its division Heartland Human Care Services (HHCS):

1. Immediately cease intaking immigrant children into their detention centers;

2. Immediately end their contract with the US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to detain immigrant children;

3. Release and reunify the immigrant children in their physical custody with their sponsors and families in the United States as soon as possible without sharing their sponsors’ biometric data, documentation status, or other personal information with ICE or with any federal agency that shares information with ICE;

4. Pledge to use their resources and power to fight for a true detention-free, deportation-free, and ICE-free zone in Chicago.

This is in the best interest of the children in Heartland Alliance’s custody as well as the nationwide fight to end child detention, led by local campaigns which influence local and national policy, for five key reasons:

First, the children currently detained can and should be with their families and sponsors in the United States; Heartland Alliance does not need to collaborate with ICE in order to reunite these children with their sponsors. Heartland Alliance openly collaborates with ICE on a regular basis.

• According to one job posting by Heartland Alliance on Indeed.com, a “Swing Shift Mental Health Clinical Practitioner [for] Unaccompanied Children's Programs […] Collaborates and serves as a primary contact for [...] the Immigration and Customs Enforcement [ICE] department”.

• ProPublica reports on one of the most patently disturbing examples of this collaboration: “As caseworkers try to find placements, the older teens [in Heartland detention centers] live in fear of turning 18. Records show that immigration officials, almost without fail, arrive on the children’s birthdays to take them into custody.”

• Crucially, a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) between DHS/ICE and ORR written in 2016 has established information-sharing between the agencies, including the fingerprinting of sponsors and investigation of their immigration status, with which Heartland has complied. When Heartland shares the biometric data, documentation status, and other personal information of detained children and their families and sponsors with ORR, Heartland is sharing that information with ICE.

• Heartland’s own National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), among other organizations, explicitly identifies multiple disturbing consequences of complying with the MOA: Increased risk of trafficking and exploitation of children; prolonged lengths of stay for children; heightened possibility of being transferred to an adult ICE detention center; increased cost to the U.S. taxpayer; return of children to danger.

• This information-collection and open participation in ICE surveillance not only directly harms children and their families but also delays reunification.

Second, while it is clear that the conditions in these facilities are not what Heartland Alliance claims, children should not be detained, regardless of the purported conditions of detention.

• Neither children, their parents, nor their lawyers may enter or exit at will.

• “Bad behavior may move [children] up to a detention center with higher security (and less freedom)”

• There is no such thing as (and no need for) a good child detention center. Such centers for immigrant youth did not exist until the 1990s in the US, and detaining “unaccompanied children” for more than a day was banned in the UK in 2014.

Third, despite the concern that children detained currently or in the future will end up in even less humane conditions, it is up to Heartland Alliance where the children go, and its continued detention operation gives ICE the capacity to detain more children; it is in Heartland Alliance’s power to safely reunite the children in its physical custody with their sponsors, to do so without collaborating with ICE or allowing ICE to transfer the children to another detention center, and to deny ICE the capacity to detain hundreds more children.

• On May 20th, 2019, IRC conducted an interview with David Sinski, Executive Director of Heartland Human Care Services and Vice President of Heartland Alliance, Barbara Hoffman, Heartland Alliance Chief External Affairs Officer, and Amy Rynell, Senior Director of Heartland Alliance Research and Policy. In this interview, these Heartland executives confirmed that, following the reports beginning in 2018 and various protests of Heartland Alliance facilities and events, HHCS shut down its Des Plaines detention centers by ceasing intake of children into those centers and continuing to release and reunify the remaining children in those centers until the buildings were empty, at which point Heartland ended operations in those centers entirely.

• The shutdown of Tornillo also serves as an example of feasibility. According to the Washington Poston January 11 of this year: “Three weeks ago, the camp held 2,800 teens. Of these, 300 were transferred to other facilities and the rest were released to sponsors, usually relatives, who had been vetted by the government, according to Evy Ramos, spokeswoman for BCFS, the San Antonio nonprofit that runs the camp.” Almost 90% of those children went home or as close to it as possible. In fact, Tornillo secured agreements with federal agencies to relax their draconian background check policies in order to facilitate quicker release and reunification once the center was forced into a concrete shutdown timeline.

Fourth, While Heartland Alliance purports itself to work only in the interest of human rights, the over $40 million it receives annually to detain immigrant children (nearly a third of its $150 million annual revenue) corrupts its institutional incentives: its federal funding to detain children has increased at stunning rates, and its executive salaries have only grown along with it.

• DHHS grants for the Unaccompanied Alien Children program (including post-detention wellness checks) accounted for 70% of Heartland Human Care Services' total revenue in 2017 (the last year for which 990 filings are available). This amounts to roughly 25% of Heartland Alliance’s overall revenue. Considering the proportion of its revenue dedicated to child detention, it is clear and indisputable that Heartland is benefiting monetarily from child detention. (Internal Revenue Service. (2011-2017). Form 990: Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax: Heartland Human Care and Services.)

Fifth, abolishing all detention centers is an essential element of a national movement in which local entities refuse to cooperate with racist, xenophobic, and imperialistic immigration policies; every one of these local wins works to create and expand ICE-free zones, free detained people in these areas, and further policies that end our nation’s ongoing war against immigrants.

• Activists forced the resignation of CEO and founder of Southwest Key (another non-profit child detention center), Juan Sanchez, in March 2019 due to controversy surrounding his $1.5 million dollar salary, allegations of sexual misconduct, inadequate vetting of Southwest Key employees, and allegations of corruption.

• Activists fighting against detention centers and for human rights in Atlanta have victoriously fought for the City of Atlanta to refuse to hold detainees on behalf of ICE.

• Activists fighting against detention centers and for human rights in Texas have shut down the Tornillo, Texas, influx facility, releasing the majority of children to their sponsors.

• Activists fighting against detention centers and for human rights in Oregon have successfully pushed the Springfield, Oregon, city council to end their contract with ICE.

• Activists fighting against detention centers and for human rights in Pennsylvania’s Shut Down Berks Coalition continue to fight to shut down the Berks County Residential Facility after successfully de-licensing the operator.

• Activists fighting against detention centers and for human rights in Florida continue to fight to shut down the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, a facility described by lawyers as a “military-style” detention camp whose capacity will otherwise soon reach 3,200 children.

We the undersigned implore David Sinski and Heartland Alliance to clear the moral conscience of the City of Chicago by acceding to our demands.

The petition below contains the same text; it will be sent to David Sinski and Heartland Alliance with your signatures.

For more information or communication, feel free to visit FreeHeartlandKids.com, contact us at FreeHeartlandKids@gmail.com, and search and spread the hashtag #FreeHeartlandKids!