Thread: Final ICE Detainees Leave Federal Prison In Oregon

Final ICE Detainees Leave Federal Prison In Oregon

by Conrad Wilson Follow OPB Nov. 28, 2018 2:36 p.m. | Updated: Nov. 28, 2018 4:23 p.m. | Portland, Ore.

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The hundreds of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees that were once housed in five federal prisons across the Western United States have been released, deported or transferred to other facilities.

The last ICE detainee being housed at the federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, was transferred on Wednesday to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, a private civil detention facility where the agency houses more than 1,000 immigrants.

The second to last detainee was released and granted asylum by an immigration judge Monday.

“There are no ICE detainees at Victorville, Sheridan, SeaTac, La Tuna, or Phoenix,” said Tanya Roman, a spokeswoman for ICE.

In May, ICE began sending up to 1,600 detainees to federal prisons in Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona and Texas.
The use of the prisons was directly tied to the Trump administration’s zero tolerance immigration policy.

“The interagency agreements with [Bureau of Prisons] were set up as a temporary measure,” Roman said.

The detainees’ confinement in federal prisons prompted multiple lawsuits. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Portland-based Innovation Law Lab argued ICE’s use of federal prisons to house detainees violated the U.S. Constitution.

Immigration is a civil violation and has different detention standards than criminal confinement. Many — if not most — of the detainees being housed in prisons had not been charged criminally and were not serving criminal sentences, according to multiple immigration attorneys who worked on the cases.
In Oregon, the majority of the ICE detainees were represented by the Innovation Law Lab.

Stephen Manning, the firm’s executive director, said they represented 80 clients detained at Sheridan.

One was granted asylum and the other 79 passed their credible fear interviews, a critical step in the asylum process.

Manning said ICE should never have put detainees in federal prisons.

“It was a mistake for them to do it at the beginning,” Manning said. “Over the course of time, the error became more and more apparent — at least as a constitutional matter.”

While ICE appears to have abandoned its use of federal prisons, the signed agreements between ICE and the Bureau of Prisons remain in effect until June 2019.

https://www.opb.org/news/article/ice...release-final/

One was granted asylum and the other 79 passed their credible fear interviews, a critical step in the asylum process.

My question is, now that Jeff Sessions is gone, are some of the more radical immigration judges going to revert back to their former ways and start giving asylum to folks claiming domestic violence, gang violence, etc.? I'm betting, without Sessions in control of the DOJ, the number of those winning their asylum cases will start to go up again.

DEPORT THEM ALL HOME!

This chart only goes to April 2018, it would be interesting to see what it is now.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-...m-applications

Asylum Applications in the United States decreased to 6901 Persons in April from 7709 Persons in March of 2018. Asylum Applications in the United States averaged 4351.59 Persons from 2000 until 2018, reaching an all time high of 16331 Persons in March of 2017 and a record low of 522 Persons in August of 2000.