Over the past year, immigrant and civil rights groups have witnessed a dramatic increase of immigration enforcement and detention due to the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy along the border. This includes the practice of family separation, a policy that has left hundreds of children in child detention centers across the country.

Shelters that were at 30 percent capacity one year ago are now at 90 percent.[1]

According to a Health and Human Services official from the Obama administration:

“The closer they get to 100 percent, the less ability they will have to address anything unforeseen. Even if there’s not a sudden influx, they will be running out of capacity soon unless something changes.”

Thanks to dogged reporting by journalists along our southern border, we learned earlier this year about children and families being separated at the border. But that reporting was mainly from outside the detention centers, because the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement routinely denies or limits journalists access to child detention centers, arguing that they need to protect the privacy of children. But professional journalists are capable of reporting on children responsibly, and the government could easily negotiate with them on ways to do so.

We demand access to detention centers so that the American people and the world can see the permanent harm the Trump administration’s policies are having on children and families in the name of our government.

Stand together and demand that journalists be given immediate increased access to child detention centers. Sign the petition today!

These shelters are not the solution but in order to hold the government accountable we need to have access to them.