Managing Partner David Kolko Volunteering in Dilley

Managing Partner David Kolko is spending his week this week volunteering at the family immigration jail in Dilley, Texas. The Dilley facility is an ICE processing center where refugee women and children are being held in Texas, waiting to fight their cases. These women and children are fleeing gang violence and lawlessness in Central America, primarily Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Mr. Kolko is also joined by our recent Spring 2015 intern and DU law graduate, Danielle Okay.

As of today, the Dilley facility is holding approximately 1,700 detainees. The facility has a maximum capacity of 2,400, which it expects to reach in the coming weeks. Its remote location in south Texas makes access to legal counsel very difficult, if not impossible. In response, volunteer attorneys from across the United States have taken time off of work and traveled to Dilley on their own dimes to represent and assist these women and children in need.

Family detention has been a major black eye for the United States government in recent years. The decision to hold families in immigration jails is reminiscent of the internment camps during World War II, keeping families in facilities and limiting their due process. The Dilley facility is a for-profit facility run by the private company, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). In recent weeks, both CCA and ICE have come under fire for prescribing water for medical problems, and over-vaccinating young children and babies.

Mr. Kolko and a delegation of attorneys, law students, and paralegals from Colorado will spend the remainder of the week on the ground in Dilley, speaking with and counseling refugees seeking aid, and representing them in immigration court proceedings as they seek to bond out of the privately-run facility to fight their cases in a traditional immigration court.