Despite some of the assertions made in The Least of These, conditions at a Texas family detention center for immigration detainees aren’t cruel when compared to most prisons. But the documentary on the blandly named T. Don Hutto Residential Center (out on DVD) raises many interesting and important questions about the facility, established under the Bush administration’s border security crackdown post 9-11. According to advocacy groups, most of the families incarcerated at Hutto are not illegal immigrants by asylum seekers and their children fleeing persecution in their homelands. Rather than submit them to more benign forms of monitoring, Bush officials decided to lock them up while awaiting hearings that could drag on for many, many months.
Beyond the question of what to do with asylum seekers waiting for their day in court, The Least of These glances sideways at the surrounding town of Taylor, Texas. Hutto is a private, for-profit facility, which puts money directly into the county treasury and employs over 200 locals. This becomes crucial, because like many towns, Taylor was a manufacturing center turned ghost town from the globalization culminating in NAFTA. The family prison has become a corner stone for the local economy.
This August, as a result of an ACLU suit documented in the film, the Obama administration announced it would stop sending families to Hutto. The facility’s future is unclear, but the doubtful scheme of private prisons remains a problem along with the fate of immigrants and asylum seekers.
