Thread: Hotels, other sites may house detained immigrants

Hotels, other sites may house detained immigrants

By SUZANNE GAMBOA, The Associated Press
8:11 p.m. October 5, 2009

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.

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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On the Net: Department of Homeland Security: http://www.dhs.gov
Immigration and Customs Enforcement: http://www.ice.gov

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/ ... dex=177846

AOL Poll - "What Do You Think of the New Plan" - included with this article here:
http://news.aol.com/article/new-homelan ... use/704300

edited -

Thank you, JohnDoe2, for correcting my mistake.

The poll is at:

http://news.aol.com/article/new-homelan ... se/704300#

Why should illegal aliens be treated like guests and put up in hotel-like facilities? This is slap in the face of every immigrant who works hard to come here legally. Janet Napolitano is the most incompetent idiot to have a position in Homeland Security. The idea of giving illegal aliens these kind of privileges is outrageous.

What do you think of the new plan?
Thumbs down 63%
Thumbs up 37%
Total Votes: 24,001

In general, how does this country handle illegal immigrants?
Too leniently 90%
Too harshly 6%
About right 4%
Total Votes: 29,200

Kinder Gentler DHS Vacation on us, until we give you Amnesty!!!!

"Crossing the border is not a crime per se" so let's put them up in a hotel on us.

Are they going to have armed guards and a containment barrier around the grounds or they just going to let them run out the doors when they put their heads together.

Sarcastically: Why not just use the old drop houses they are cheep and seem to work well.

Do you want an illegal alien detainment facility in your neighborhood? Communities throw fits over juvenile detention, non-violent offender detention, half-way houses... what makes DHS think this is going to be well received?

Dixie

By the way, they moved the criminal illegal immigrants from Hutto to Pennsylvania away from the border that they would likely be deported through. Does that make any sense?

Detained immigrant families being moved from Texas to Pennsylvania facility
http://www.alipac.us/ftopicp-949973.html#949973

Dixie

RELATED

New immigration detention reform initiatives

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-173545.html

Added to Homepage:
http://www.alipac.us/article4567.html

A fence and armed guards on the border are the most cost efficient ways to handle this problem.

My next comment …why all these F.E.M.A camps? These camps are not imaginary. Daneen Peterson’s tour though one camp indicates they are definitely to hold large numbers of people. I researched and researched…but never found a dollar amount paid to Halliburton for “faceliftsâ€