Families protest at the Homestead detention center in May of 2019.
MIAMI, Fla. – After multiple years of delay, the federal government will be held accountable for withholding records confirming that immigrant children – including those separated from their families – were put in harm’s way while detained next to contaminated areas in Homestead, FL.
This marks the culmination of an American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) lawsuit against federal agencies that previously withheld documents about environmental hazards at the Homestead detention center (officially known as the “Homestead Temporary Influx Shelter for Unaccompanied Alien Children”).The detention center site was originally part of the Homestead Air Force Base in 1990 when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed the base on the Superfund National Priorities List for generating hazardous pollution and contamination. The detention center was shuttered in 2019 under immense public pressure from activists and community groups.
“We shut down the detention center, but our struggle was far from over,” said Guadalupe De La Cruz, Program Director for AFSC’s Florida program. “The justifications and deceptions the government used to jail children on a toxic military site in Homestead are the same tactics they are using to justify cruel detention practices today. We were determined to expose the real story about how the federal government treated children at the Homestead detention center and to hold the government accountable so that children are not exposed to hazards like these again.”
The initial requests were submitted under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and sought information regarding contamination and other environmental conditions at and near the detention center, along with plans for migrant detention at the facility. When the Air Force and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to provide the information, Earthjustice and AFSC filed a lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed in Washington, D.C. in 2021 to enforce the public’s right to information about detention of children and the risk of exposure to environmental hazards at the Homestead facility. A federal judge ordered the agencies to disclose those records on a rolling basis, which ultimately amounted to more than 20,000 pages. Yesterday, AFSC reached an agreement with the agencies to pay its attorneys’ fees after confirming it had received all requested records.
“The only way to ensure our rights have meaning is to enforce them when they are ignored,” said Tania Galloni, one of the Earthjustice attorneys representing AFSC in the case. “The government is not invincible. It has to answer to the courts. And it has to answer to the people.”
The records confirmed that children as young as six years old were held at the facility and that some were not “unaccompanied minors,” but rather had been taken from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. There was no evidence that the detention center site had been evaluated for environmental hazards before the government began detaining children there, despite the known history of contamination at the base. The records further showed that remediation for the contaminated areas closest to the detention center had not been completed before or while children were detained there.
“These documents confirm that the federal government placed children in harm’s way by detaining them next to a military Superfund site and active military base,” said Emma Shaw Crane, an assistant professor in Stanford University’s Department of Anthropology. “It took a multi-year collaboration between grassroots activists, lawyers, and academic researchers to take them to court and access these records. As the government expands detention and undermines mechanisms for transparency, we will continue working together to protect and defend the dignity of all people.”
AFSC collaborated with other immigrant advocates, academics, and environmental groups to expose the risks to children detained at the Homestead facility. Since the facility’s closure in 2019, they have continued to document the harms and seek justice and accountability, while also mobilizing to stop other immigration detention centers in Florida. Immigrant children and families are once again facing ramped-up family separation and detention efforts by the federal government.
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The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) promotes a world free of violence, inequality, and oppression. Guided by the Quaker belief in the divine light within each person, we nurture the seeds of change and the respect for human life to fundamentally transform our societies and institutions. We work with people and partners worldwide, of all faiths and backgrounds, to meet urgent community needs, challenge injustice, and build peace.
Earthjustice is the premier environmental law organization in the U.S., and the legal backbone of the domestic environmental movement. For over 50 years, we have been fighting in the courts, in legislatures, and in the court of public opinion to stop the climate crisis, create healthy communities free of pollution, safeguard our precious lands and waters, and expand environmental legal frameworks to achieve these goals. Earthjustice.org