A group of mothers being held with their children at an immigration detention center have begun a hunger strike in protest of the lengthy stays detainees at the facility are routinely forced to endure.

Female immigrants at the Berks County Residential Center in Pennsylvania have now been on strike for more than a week, with some of them insisting by the end of this month at least three families will have been held in custody at the facility for a full year.

Government officials have long claimed the average stay of all detainees held at the facility is just 20 days. That near three week period is the maximum time a federal court previously suggested that children be held in custody.

Letter Sent to Homeland Security

"On many occasions our children have thought about suicide because of the confinement and desperation that is caused by being here," read a letter 22 mothers sent last week to Department of Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson.

The letter also accuses the government of "making arguments that are false" about the average stay of children being housed at the facility. The children being held at Berks range from two to 16 years old.

At its height, as many as 26 mothers are reported to have been taking part in the demonstrations, though Immigration Customs and Enforcement officials now insist that number is down to just four.

Many of the detainees typically held at Berks are those who have largely exhausted their legal options in terms of being able to remain in the U.S. But in 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union won a stay of removal for 28 families held there, resulting in all of them now being held at the facility far beyond the standard 20 days ICE officials insist they strive for.

"ICE thinks of them as an aberration because they are fighting their cases," said attorney Bridget Cambria, whose clients at Berks were denied asylum after fleeing violence and persecution in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

Dispute Headed for Supreme Court?

Still pending in federal court, the ACLU case could go as high as the Supreme Court and take as long as another year to be adjudicated. In the meantime, lawyers argue their clients should be released from Berks.

"It is becoming increasingly hard to conclude that there is not some punitive element to keeping these women in detention simply because they exercised their right to bring a constitutional test case," said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project.

In a Human Rights First generated report, psychologists and pediatricians previously warned long-term confinement at Berks led to "symptoms of depression, behavioral regression and anxiety" in the children they observed.

"What we saw among the adults were signs of fear and of unknowing what would happen to them next," added Dr. Alan Shapiro, who visited Berks for the report. "These feelings of helplessness and hopelessness hurt their ability to mitigate the stress on their children."

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