Why is Obama still locking up so many innocent women and kids on US soil?

In family detention centres on American soil, hundreds of women and children from around the world are still being detained at length, under inhumane conditions, awaiting almost-certain deportation.

These refugees have fled their homes to escape the threat of violence, persecution and murder in search of safety and asylum in the United States. But the Obama administration has continually refused them meaningful access to counsel and interpreters, hurled through proceedings with predetermined results and, ultimately, sent them back to the danger from which they fled. Those lucky enough to have access to immigration lawyers are often held in detention centres for months while their case proceeds, while those without access to counsel might only be jailed for days or weeks before they’re deported.

Lucia – not her real name – is one of the many asylum seekers we met while volunteering at the immigration jail for families in Artesia, New Mexico. She fled Guatemala after the violent MS-18 (the de facto government) killed her husband for preaching non-violence. The MS-18 got to him because his religious message of non-violence was, in their eyes, a message of disloyalty and of dissidence. And then the MS-18 went after Lucia because they believe that families breed disloyalty. The MS-18 beat her to within an inch of her life while she was pregnant with her son. Later, they threatened to rape and murder her. Upon reaching the border, the US department of homeland security detained Lucia and her son.

When we heard Lucia’s story, it was hard for us to ignore the echoes of another woman’s tale. Lucie Gabel and her young son Gerhard boarded the MS St Louis with 900 other passengers in 1939, fleeing her native Berlin to escape Nazi persecution. When the refugees arrived in Florida, they were detained at sea, and the president denied them entry to the country. The ship returned to Europe with Lucie and Gerhard on board; both Lucie and her son were later killed at Auschwitz.

Not unlike 75 years ago, our president is telling Lucia – along with 526 other women and children being held captive in the Artesia detention centre – “no”. The Obama administration decided that Lucia did not qualify for asylum, even before anyone heard her story.

Today, the failed states of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have some of the highest murder rates in the world. While the atrocities are not a genocide or committed by the official government, the violence against women and children is targeted, systematic and widespread, and their own governments have refused to protect them. The result has been an exodus of families fleeing horrific violence and seeking refuge in the US. However, upon arrival in the United States of America – that bastion of freedom and the beacon of hope – these refugee women and children are not given a meaningful opportunity to seek protection under the law.

When the refugee detention centre in Artesia opened, the word had already come down from on high: “We will send you back.” Sure enough, the government has done its level best to march these women and children through a traumatic asylum process – one in which legally established protections for refugees are being ignored or abused wholesale – to get them on their way to an airplane that sends them back to the lands they fled.

We know that these women and children are refugees because we have been to Artesia and have spoken with hundreds of these mothers and their children. As attorneys who practice asylum law, we believe deeply in our nation’s obligation to provide real protection to refugees, but the Obama administration’s willful disregard of existing asylum laws and procedures – and its smothering of due process with detention and rapid deportation – is truly appalling.

The Obama administration should shut down the detention centres at Artesia and Karnes City, Texas, and stop building a new South Texas site at Dilley. These jails don’t belong on our shores. Obama must renew the American opportunity for refugees to seek asylum, to escape persecution and torture.

We can never sacrifice fundamental fairness for political gain, and we should never value expediency over justice – especially in matters of life or death.