This summer, I joined psychologists and lawyers from across the Midatlantic and New York to visit the Berks County Detention Center, in Pennsylvania. Berks is one of 108 immigration detention centers around the country run by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and it is home to 36 families, including children of as young as two years old, who are awaiting deportation from the U.S. The purpose of our visit, which was arranged by Human Rights First, was to review conditions in the detention center; as a doctoral student in clinical psychology, my particular interest was in understanding the mental health needs of the detainees, and the availability of qualified mental health care in the Center.
Many studies and reports have demonstrated the impact of detention on mental health, and some of these impacts were clearly visible in talking to the families at Berks.