DHS-Ideas for Immigrant Detention Include Converting Hotels
Ideas for Immigrant Detention Include Converting Hotels and Building Models
New York Times
By NINA BERNSTEIN
Published: October 5, 2009
The Obama administration is looking to convert hotels and nursing homes into immigration detention centers and to build two model detention centers from scratch as it tries to transform the way the government holds people it is seeking to deport.
These and other initiatives, described in an interview on Monday by Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, are part of the administration’s effort to revamp the much-criticized detention system, even as it expands the enforcement programs that send most people accused of immigration violations to jails and private prisons.
The cost, she said, would be covered by greater efficiencies in the detention and removal system, which costs $2.4 billion annually to operate and holds about 380,000 people a year.
“The paradigm was wrong,â€
