Extreme gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras has prompted thousands of mothers and children to seek refuge in the United States. In response to the 2014 migrant crisis, the United States' use of family detention centers represents one of the most controversial aspects of the Obama administration's political response. For-profit detention centers located in Karnes, Texas and Dilley, Texas, are currently housing thousands of asylum-seeking mothers and children beyond capacity (García-Ditta 2015: n.p.). The gravity of the current refugee crisis is only exacerbated by language barriers - one of the direst obstacles to avoiding swift removal processes. A crucial step in the asylum-seeking process is the credible fear interview (CFI), an immigration proceeding in which a person must demonstrate credible fear of returning to his or her home country or be subject to deportation. This article directly locates language mediation in non-criminal immigration proceedings as a human right to which institutional compliance is still unresponsive and ineffectual. The authors aim to offer a descriptive analysis of US immigration proceedings with a brief final discussion which contemplates the unexplored aspects of the legal and ethical grey zone of language access in borderland detention centers.

Credible fear interview detention centers Interpreting in asylum proceedings Language access in immigration hearings

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