More changes to immigrant detention system

by Erin Kelly - Jan. 25, 2010 04:33 PM
Republic Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - Federal immigration officials in June plan to launch an online immigrant-detainee locator so family members can easily find their relatives when they are in custody awaiting possible deportation.

"You can look up their name and find out where they are and what the visiting hours are at that detention facility," said John T. Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Morton announced the locator Monday during a speech at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.


Under the current system, families and immigrant rights' attorneys complain that they often have trouble finding out where detainees have been taken after they are arrested for alleged immigration violations. ICE often transfers immigration detainees to centers, hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away to other states, far from their homes, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch.

The new "detainee locator" is the latest feature of a major overhaul announced last fall of the controversial detention system that houses about 380,000 immigrants a year at more than 400 sites in Arizona and throughout the nation.

In Arizona, an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 adult immigrants are in detention. About 1,500 of them are housed at the federal detention center in Eloy, and a total of about 1,200 more are housed in three facilities in Florence, including the Pinal County jail. Juveniles are held at a center in Phoenix.

According to ICE records, 107 immigrants have died while in government custody since 2003. Nine died at the contract-run detention center in Eloy, more than at any other facility in the nation. Of the nine people who died in the Eloy facility, three were from Mexico. The rest were from Fiji, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, Iraq and Ghana.

The causes of death included hanging, cardiac arrest, asphyxiation, a tumor and cirrhosis. Morton said regional case managers are being assigned to keep track of detainees with significant medical problems to ensure they are getting proper care. Detainees with major problems will be housed in facilities near hospitals and medical centers, he said.

Morton assured skeptics that he was serious when he announced last fall that illegal immigrants who pose no danger to America will no longer be housed in jails with dangerous criminal aliens such as drug traffickers, immigrant smugglers and international child pornographers.

He said his agency is hiring 50 federal employees to directly oversee the largest of the 400-plus detention facilities, which now are largely run by contractors without much government oversight. Eventually, Morton said, he wants to have federal employees in charge of every detention center.

Civil rights groups have long alleged that conditions at the detention centers are often cruel and inhumane. Morton said immigration officials are rewriting the standards for the treatment of detainees.

"This is a sustained, aggressive effort to reform detention procedures," Morton said.

The assistant secretary said his agency is in talks with contractors about building a new detention center that won't look anything like a jail and won't have bars on the windows. It will have phones and open areas for the people staying there, he said. Morton did not say where the facility would be built.

"I'm hoping that before I leave office that we will have an immigration detention center that people who are interested can go and look at - and it won't be a jail," Morton said.

In addition, the agency is looking at alternatives to detention, including ankle bracelets that give immigrants much greater freedom but ensure that they don't run away before their deportation hearings.

http://oneoldvet.com/

www.azcentral.com