DHS - Hotels, other sites may house detained immigrants
Posted on Tuesday, October 06 @ 15:41:51 EDT
Topic: Department of Homeland Security
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 WASHINGTON — Former hotels, nursing homes and
other sites would be used to hold immigrants who are not criminals or
violent as part of a larger plan to reform immigration detention
proposed by the homeland security secretary, according to documents
obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
Janet Napolitano is proposing that illegal immigrants awaiting
deportation be confined according to the risk they may pose and will
detail her plan on Tuesday. The reforms were previewed by the agency in
August without as much detail.
Topics: illegal immigration, illegal immigrants, aliens, deportation, enforcement, DHS, Napolitano, detention, detainment, arrests
By SUZANNE GAMBOA
The Associated Press
October 5, 2009
The alternative sites are intended to cut the costs of detaining immigrants, which reached nearly $2 billion in 2008.
The plan is based on a review of immigration detention by Dora Schriro,
Napolitano's former detention adviser. She resigned last month to
become commissioner of New York City's jails.
Under the plan, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the
Homeland Security Department, will develop a way to classify immigrant
detainees that will determine the facility where they are detained.
John Morton, head of ICE, will research the hotels and other venues
where nonviolent, noncriminal immigrants could be held. The agency
expects to save money by not putting everyone in local, state and
government jails and prisons as they do now.
ICE also will to submit to Congress in coming weeks a plan for using
alternatives to detention. The agency says possible alternatives will
cost only about $14 a day compared to about $100 a day for detention.
The agency has completed one of the reforms announced in August,
removing families from T. Don Hutto detention center, a former prison
in central Texas. The agency plans to detain women there who are now
held at three facilities in Texas, saving about $900,000 through the
end of the year, the documents state.
The agency said it paid $2.8 million a month at Hutto even when it was not full.
ICE plans to put 50 federal employees in detention centers where more
than 80 percent of immigrants are held, more than double the 23
employees announced in August, in an effort to improve conditions.
Hiring notices for the jobs were posted Sept. 18.
ICE says it has paid $200,000 per facility at more than 30 facilities
for contractors to monitor conditions. But the agency says a federal
employee, training and equipment would cost about $160,000.
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