The Future of Family Detention in America

As the director of the Detention and Asylum program at the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, Michelle Brané focuses on the critical protection needs of women and children asylum seekers in the United States.

Brané has more than 18 years of experience working on immigration and human rights issues. She has authored several reports and articles on immigration detention including co-authoring “Locking Up Family Values: The Detention of Immigrant Families.” As an attorney advisor with the Department of Justice Board of Immigration Appeals, she specialized in asylum cases and assisted in developing relevant regulations and training programs for new staff. She has extensive experience in program management and advocacy.

At Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service she developed and coordinated the Detained Torture Survivor Legal Support Network, the Legal Orientation Program and was the director of the Access to Justice Unit. She has also worked internationally with human rights organizations in India and as a human rights officer with the OSCE in Bosnia, where she also served as the head of the Sarajevo Field Office.

Brané holds a BA in international studies from the University of Michigan, and JD from Georgetown University and is a member of the New York bar.

Vanita Gupta is a staff attorney with the Racial Justice Program of the American Civil Liberties Union and an adjunct clinical professor at NYU School of Law, where she teaches and oversees a civil rights litigation clinic. At the ACLU, she litigates civil rights cases related to immigrants’ rights, criminal justice, and education reform.

She recently won a class action settlement on behalf of Mexican Americans living along the southern border who had been improperly denied passports by the U.S. State Department. She also won a landmark settlement on behalf of immigrant children detained at the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Center, a converted medium security prison in Texas operated by a private adult prison corporation.

Prior to joining the ACLU, Gupta was first a Soros Justice fellow and then assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF), where she litigated civil rights cases that promoted systemic reform of the criminal justice system. At LDF, she successfully led the effort to overturn the drug convictions of 38 defendants in Tulia, Texas, representing wrongfully-convicted individuals and coordinating the legal and media strategy that involved several national law firms. She also served on the legal team that won freedom for renowned prison journalist Wilbert Rideau in his fourth retrial after he had already spent 44 years in prison.

Gupta has served as a consultant for the Open Society Institute on various international human rights projects in Central Europe, Russia, and Africa. She serves on the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch US Programs and the board of Working Films, Inc.

Barbara Hines is a clinical professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law and directs the immigration clinic. She is board certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization in Immigration and Nationality Law.

Hines was the first codirector of the Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of Texas Immigration and Refugee Rights Project, San Antonio, Texas. She is a member of Board of Directors of the National Immigration Project.

Hines received the 1992 American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) Jack Wasserman Memorial Award for Excellence in Litigation, the 1993 AILA Texas Chapter Litigation Award and the 2007 Elmer Fried Excellence in Teaching Award. She was Fulbright Scholar in Argentina in 1996 and 2004 where she focused her work on immigration issues in Argentina. In 2000, Hines was selected as one of the 101 best lawyers in the state by the Texas Lawyers Publication. She received the Excellence in Public Interest Award for the Public Interest Law Student Association at the University of Texas Law School in 2002.

Hines has litigated many cases involving the rights of immigrants and writes and lectures nationally on immigration topics. Most recently, she was co-counsel in the litigation to close the Hutto family immigration detention center in Taylor, Texas.

Marcy Garriott is an independent documentary filmmaker based in Austin, Texas. Her first film as director/producer was the award-winning documentary Split Decision, the story of world championship boxer Jesus Chavez, deported at the peak of his career due to tightened immigration policies.

Garriott next directed/produced Inside the Circle, winner of four festival audience awards, including SXSW 2007.  Inside the Circle, which takes audiences inside the kinetic world of b-boying, is distributed by Cinema Libre Studio and was recently broadcast on MTV. Garriott served on the Austin Film Society Board of Directors for six years, serving two years as President of the Board. She is currently on the Board of Directors of KLRU (Austin’s public television station) and on the Advisory Board of Cine Las Americas.