Thread: U.S. sending 1,600 illegal aliens to federal prisons

Exclusive: U.S. sending 1,600 immigration detainees to federal prisons

By Sarah N. Lynch and Kristina Cooke
,Reuters•June 7, 2018

FILE PHOTO: The badge of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Fugitive Operations team is seen in Santa Ana, California, U.S., May 11, 2017. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo More

By Sarah N. Lynch and Kristina Cooke

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - U.S. authorities are transferring into federal prisons about 1,600 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees, officials told Reuters on Thursday, in the first large-scale use of federal prisons to hold detainees amid a Trump administration crackdown on people entering the country illegally.

An ICE spokeswoman told Reuters five federal prisons will temporarily take in detainees awaiting civil immigration court hearings, including potential asylum seekers, with one prison in Victorville, California, preparing to house 1,000 people.

President Donald Trump has made his hard-line stance on immigration an integral part of his presidency and has promised to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border to stem the flow of migrants. He has also promised to keep immigrants targeted for deportation locked up “pending the outcome of their removal proceedings.”

Under former President Barack Obama, many immigrants without serious criminal records were allowed to await their court dates while living in the United States. Others were housed in immigration detention facilities or local jails.

ICE has used federal prisons in the past but not on this scale, sources said.

The new policy drew criticism from immigration advocates and former officials.

Kevin Landy, a former ICE assistant director responsible for the Office of Detention Policy and Planning under the Obama administration, said the move to house so many detainees at once in federal prisons was “highly unusual” and raises oversight concerns.

“A large percent of ICE detainees have no criminal record and are more vulnerable in a prison setting – security staff and administrators at BOP facilities have spent their careers dealing with hardened criminals serving long sentences for serious felonies, and the procedures and staff training reflect that,” he said. “This sudden mass transfer could result in some serious problems.”

Officials of a prison employees' union said the influx of ICE detainees, who were arrested at the border or elsewhere in the United States by immigration officials, raises questions about prison staffing and safety.

Union leaders at prisons in California, Texas and Washington state who spoke to Reuters said they had little time to prepare for the large intake of detainees.

At Victorville, the prison getting the largest number of people, workers are moving about 500 inmates in a medium-security facility to make space, said John Kostelnik, local president for the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals union.

"There is so much movement going on," said Kostelnik. "Everyone is running around like a chicken without their head."

In addition to Victorville, other prisons that have received or will receive detainees include ones in Washington state, Oregon, Arizona and Texas.

ICE spokeswoman Dani Bennett said ICE is "working to meet the demand for additional immigration detention space" due to a surge in illegal border crossings and a U.S. Department of Justice zero-tolerance policy.

"To meet this need, ICE is collaborating with the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), private detention facility operators and local government agencies," she said in a statement to Reuters.

In April 2018, nearly 51,000 people were apprehended at or near the southern border, up from about 16,000 in the same month a year earlier.

A new agreement between ICE and the Justice Department makes about 1,600 prison beds available and is expected to last 120 days, giving ICE time to secure more space for detainees. It comes amid a crackdown by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on both illegal border crossings and people seeking asylum.

Recently, Sessions said the Justice Department planned to prosecute every person who crosses the border illegally and to separate migrant children from their parents.

Trump in the spring signed a memorandum ending "catch and release," in which illegal immigrants were released from detention while awaiting court hearings.

According to ICE data, the average daily population of detainees in its facilities as of May 26 was 41,134, up from the 2017 daily average of 38,106.

Immigration advocates immediately decried the news of sending detainees to federal penitentiaries.

"Our federal prisons are set up to detain the worst of the worst. They should not be used for immigration purposes," said Ali Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum.

“Federal prisons are for hardened criminals.

They are not physically set up for immigrant landscapers looking for a job or fleeing violence,” Noorani said.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive...011534542.html

AG Jeff Sessions vows to prosecute all illegal border crossers and separate children

ICE is sending 1,000 immigrant detainees to Victorville prison

Kate Morrissey Contact Reporter

Immigration officials are moving 1,000 detainees, including asylum seekers, to a medium-security federal prison building in Victorville, California.

In all, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has contracted with the Bureau of Prisons to house more than 1,600 detainees among five facilities in California, Washington, Texas, Oregon and Arizona.

“Immigration and Customs Enforcement is working to meet the demand for additional immigration detention space, both long and short term,” said Danielle Bennett, an ICE spokeswoman. “To meet this need, ICE is collaborating with the U.S. Marshals Service, the Bureau of Prisons, private detention facility operators and local government agencies.”

Though immigration courts have been backlogged for years, the immigration detention system began showing signs of clogging in the fall of 2017, when lines of asylum seekers waiting for room to be processed started appearing outside of the port of entry in Tijuana.

Changes in detention policy have meant that more people waiting for court dates stay in custody longer. ICE has the option to release people on “parole” using ankle monitors or check-ins as alternatives to detention, but for many in the immigration system, that has become rare.

ICE used to have a policy of releasing pregnant women unless there was a special circumstance — the agency now holds them until their last trimester.

The Supreme Court this year also vacated a Ninth Circuit ruling that required ICE to give detainees at facilities in its jurisdiction bond hearings every six months. While the Supreme Court sent the decision back to the circuit court with instructions to re-decide the case, ICE still is holding many, including asylum seekers who asked for help at a port of entry, in mandatory detention.

Bennett said the agency needed the extra bed space because of a “surge in illegal border crossings” and because of the Department of Justice’s recently implemented zero-tolerance policy on illegal crossings.

Border Patrol agents along the southwest border apprehended more people so far in 2018 than 2017 by 91 percent, with 168,601 people caught this year compared with 88,171 the previous year.

This year’s apprehensions are similar to those from 2016 during the same time frame. Agents arrested 161,572 people between January and May in 2016, a four percent difference from this year’s total.

Looking at the longer-term trend, illegal crossings have been trending down since at least 2000. That year, agents arrested 963,716 people crossing illegally, more than five times the current apprehension total.

The zero-tolerance policy refers people who cross the border illegally for criminal prosecution in federal court where they are held by the U.S. Marshals Service, not ICE.

People in ICE custody are civil detainees waiting for hearings in immigration court. ICE does not have authority to hold people as punishment.

“This removes any doubt whatsoever that the supposedly ‘civil’ immigration detention system is really just a system of mass imprisonment without trial,” said Bardis Vakili, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego. “Asylum seekers do not belong in prisons, nor do people pursuing lawful avenues to stay with their families in the U.S.”

The move raises many logistical questions about how the prison will handle certain requirements for the immigrant detainees.

Immigration detention facilities often have courtrooms inside. Judges are either staffed to the court, or detainees appear in a court outside the facility via teleconference.

Signs with consulate phone numbers and ICE hotline information are posted inside the facilities, and detainees are supposed to be able to call their consulates for free.

Many do not speak English and need translation services. They also need a law library with immigration law materials.

ICE spokeswoman Bennett said that the move is supposed to be short-term.

“The use of BOP facilities is intended to be a temporary measure until ICE can obtain additional long-term contracts for new detention facilities or until the surge in illegal border crossings subsides,” she said.

Under a California law passed in June last year, state and local facilities are forbidden from adding new contracts for ICE detention or expanding old ones.

The first bus of about 250 detainees is scheduled to arrive in Victorville on Friday morning around 8 a.m. from Texas, according to an official from the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represents federal prison workers.

Eric Young, AFGE Council of Prison Locals national president called the situation “a nightmare.”

He worried about understaffing at the facility and emphasized that the situation could be dangerous both for prison employees and ICE detainees.

Nine housing units at the prison were previously closed, Young said, because the prison didn’t have enough people to staff them.

“They’re opening them all back up with no new staff,” Young said. “It raises red flags for us.”

Even teachers and other staff who don’t normally work as correctional officers will get pulled in to help supervise the influx of prisoners through a process called “augmented staff.” That means they won’t be able to provide normal programming services to help inmates with rehabilitation, Young said.

Staff at the prison received a couple of days notice that inmates would be moving to another building to make way for ICE detainees. Young worried that medium-security inmates might still have a way to “prey upon” ICE detainees, something that he says they see happen to nonviolent offenders who end up in the prison population.

“They’re going to be in a prison environment, and that’s unprecedented,” Young said. “It’s going to be a very different experience for them."

He predicted that it would have a “chilling effect” on more people coming to the border.

“I think that’s the whole purpose of the department partnering up with ICE, basically sending a message to deter people to try to come in the country illegally,” Young said. “Every time those doors slam, those metal doors slam behind you, it sends a chill down your spine knowing you’re about to enter a place you might not come out of. You know you’re in a prison when you go into one of our facilities.”

Detainees will sleep in small cells that lock every night — a marked difference from immigration detention facilities like the one at Otay Mesa Detention Center that have a more open design in the housing units.
Young also said that prison employees hadn’t been trained how to supervise immigrant detainees.

“We don’t know the protocols of how those detainees are to be treated, how they’re to be talked to, how they’re to be instructed,” Young said. “Are these individuals going to need to be strip-searched, randomly searched and patted down like we do inmates, or are we going to be told we don’t do those things?

Those are things we routinely do every day.”

“We don’t know if we even have the jurisdiction to oversee these people,” he added.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/...607-story.html

"Our federal prisons are set up to detain the worst of the worst. They should not be used for immigration purposes," said Ali Noorani, the executive director of the National Immigration Forum.

“Federal prisons are for hardened criminals.

You mean like Leona Helmsley, Martha Stewart, Michael Flynn, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean?

"ICE used to have a policy of releasing pregnant women unless there was a special circumstance — the agency now holds them until their last trimester."

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Fast track the pregnant ones OUT of here! We do not want to pay for their medical care OR child birth. They can go give birth on THEIR soil, they do it every day!

Fast track ALL minor's out of here into the care and custody of THEIR President.

Let the National Guard build a Federal Tent City on Federal Land with a Panel of Federal Judges and start TRANSPORTING them to Federal Tent City.

Put ALL immigration and visa violation in Federal Tent City!

No amenities and NO visitor's except via Skype!

Put ALL illegal aliens, visa overstays, TPS, asylum and foreign citizens in Federal Tent City to serve time and/or be deported with NO chance to ever come back!

In my opinion this is a good thing because now the word will start filtering out to the illegals that we're no longer playing games. Catch & release is taking a serious hit ........ and this is a good thing!

I would prefer they go DIRECTLY to Federal Tent City for 90 days with NO amenities and NO visitor's except via Skype then DEPORTED on the spot!

Send their minors BACK to their country and let their President pay for their care! When they get out of jail...they can reunite with their family in THEIR country.

No chance for them to EVER come back!

Send the message...no asylum at our border and no more illegal aliens invading our country.

DHS buses enter Victorville prison as first wave of illegal aliens arrive

I.C.E. issues notice that it may seek up to 15,000 beds to detain illegal alien families

DOD planning tent city for 25,000 illegal aliens in ALA., 47,000 in CA.