Video documentary about CAIR Coalition’s work and interviews with detained immigrants
Video by Gentry Underwood
“U.S. Detention of Asylum Seekers: Seeking Protection, Finding Prison” by Human Rights First
The Least of These
The Least of These explores one of the most controversial aspects of American immigration policy: family detention.
As part of the Bush administration policy to end what they termed the “catch and release’” of undocumented immigrants, the U.S. government opened the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in May 2006 as a prototype family detention facility. The facility houses immigrant children and their parents from all over the world who are awaiting asylum hearings or deportation proceedings. The film explores the government rationale for family detention, conditions at the facility, collateral damage, and the role (and limits) of community activism in bringing change. The film leads viewers to consider how core American rights and values—due process, presumption of innocence, upholding the family structure as the basic unit of civil society, and America as a refuge of last resort—should apply to immigrants, particularly children.