We just received news that tomorrow (October 6th, 2009), there will be a media advisory featuring Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Assistant Secretary John Morton announcing new immigration detention reforms. We have been waiting for the promise of reforms with bated breath – especially given that the person chosen to lead the reforms, Dora Schriro, someone who had the trust of advocacy groups and the government alike, had to leave almost as soon as she began.
What do we know so far? In its first announcement, the administration stated that “while ICE has over 32,000 detention beds at any given time, the beds are spread out over as many as 350 different facilities largely designed for penal, not civil, detention” and so reforms will allow “a move away from our present decentralized, jail-oriented approach to a system wholly designed for and based on ICE’s civil detention authorities.” Definitely a step in the right direction. But is this enough?
Firstly, Restore Fairness would like to see more community based alternatives to detention because as it stands now, thousands of detainees (440,000 this year alone) that are neither a flight risk nor a danger to the community, are detained in inhumane conditions with no access to due process. Countless reports have highlighted the gulag that the detention system has become – with detainees denied visitation, telephone calls, access to lawyers, medical care, and subject to physical and verbal abuse. And lets not forget that immigration offenses are civil offenses which means we shouldn’t be treating immigration detainees like criminals (hence the reference above to civil detention). But instead, it seems that the administration may be hinting at the expansion of detention.
Secondly, no system will be safe unless the government create legally enforceable detention standards so that those who default on their responsibilities can be held accountable. Standards that are currently in place are mainly guidelines, and are often not enough to safeguard detainees’ health and due process. The administration has already rejected a petition for enforceable standards, stating that “that rule-making would be laborious, time-consuming and less flexible” than the review process now in place.
It’s important to humanize all this legalese so to really understand what’s going on, watch the Restore Fairness video. Until then, here’s Rep. Roybal-Allard (did you know she was the first Mexican-American woman to be elected to Congress) speaking about why she has introduced a bill to ensure immigrant detainees receive fair and humane treatment while in detention.
Rep. Roybal-Allard from Breakthrough on Vimeo.
