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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Families Put Father’s Day Focus on NW Detention Center

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Friday, June 13, 2014   

TACOMA, Wash. - This Father's Day weekend, people with dads inside the Northwest Detention Center are rallying to call attention to the detainees' legal limbo and physical conditions.

A hunger strike at the facility this spring lasted more than a month. It gained international attention and sparked legislation in Congress by Rep. Adam Smith to improve detention conditions nationwide.

Jolinda Stephens is spokeswoman for Northwest Detention Center Resistance, a group representing the detainees' families. She said very little progress has been made inside the detention center.

"The food improved for a little while, and then it got worse in terms of portion size," said Stephens. "The commissary prices never changed. They maybe are working on getting phone prices better, but they haven't improved. Nothing in their day-to-day lives has actually changed."

Stephens added that one persistent concern is the uncertainty of detention lengths. Some people are held for days, others for months, with little information for families about their fate.

"The parent left on the outside has to figure out how to survive financially," Stephens said, "how to get an attorney, how to get together the money to buy the phone card, so that you can talk to your partner."

Local immigration reform groups plan to meet before the rally and say they'll be joined online by groups from Canada, England, Spain and elsewhere in the U.S.

Stephens predicted much of the frustration at the Saturday "Peoples Movement Assembly" will be directed beyond Tacoma, to President Obama.

"He has said from the very beginning that he was going to make a difference, he was going to stop separating families," said Stephens. "What he's done is the exact opposite. He's broken all records for deportations."

Inside the Northwest Detention Center, a Father's Day Fast is planned.


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