A slew of newspaper articles greeted us this morning with the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) plans to reform the immigration detention system. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the BBC and the Associated Press vied for attention with headlines that held much hope – U.S. to Revise Detention Standards, U.S. to Cut Immigration Detention, and my favorite, Ideas for Immigrant Detention Include Converting Hotels and Building Models.
So what did these ambitious plans contain? At a cost of $1.7 billion a year, the detention system is a vast network of federally run detention centers and about 300 state and county jails that detain 32,000 detainees every night or 370,000 in the year. But all these facts and figures don’t tell the real stories – of detainees transferred far from families and lawyers, of denied phone calls and visits, of 94 deaths – many questionable, and of the physical and verbal abuse that surfaces time and time again.
The reforms have emerged out of a comprehensive review conducted by Dora Schriro, the former ICE Office of Detention Policy and Planning Director, and focus on greater federal oversight, special attention to detainee medical care, and a desire to treat different types of detainees according to the level of ‘risk’ they present. As Secretary Napolitano herself pointed out, “we are taking a non system and making it into a system that will allow enforcement of our immigration laws but will also convince the American people that we are abiding by conditions of safety and security in the most cost effctive way possible.”
So proposals include presenting Congress with a plan for alternatives to detention to in the fall, placing detainees in alternative models of detention including converted hotels, nursing homes and other residential facilities, centralizing management of the detention system, and increasing oversight at facilities. Some will take more time than others, such as the implementation of an online system for families and lawyers to locate detainees or developing newer centers.
For years, advocates have been speaking of the need to distinguish between detainees, and to stop detaining those that are neither a flight risk, nor a danger to the community. We have been calling for better medical care and stopping the for profit detention system without legally enforceable standards. It’s good to see some steps in the right direction.
But there will continue to be problems. For one, what happens to those in detention already. The NYT cites an example of a woman who needs urgent medical care in the Glades County Detention Center and has been struggling to get medical help since the last 5 months. Secondly, while we welcome the promise of alternatives to detention, we hope that this includes community based alternatives, and not all invasive models such as ankle bracelets. And thirdly, we still want to see legally enforceable standards in place, so those that default on their responsibility can be held accountable.
“The Obama administration… is pushing back with an effort to be sane and proportionate. If the reforms announced on Tuesday work half as well as promised, the country will be closer to a detention system it does not have to be ashamed of.”
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.
