Thread: U.S. to Revise Detention Standards for Immigration Detainees

U.S. to Revise Detention Standards for Immigration Detainees

The Wall Street Journal
October 6, 2009
By CAM SIMPSON

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is expected on Tuesday to unveil an outline of sweeping changes for the nation's immigration-detention system, saying it will decide whom to lock up and for how long based on the danger and flight risk posed by detainees.

Officials familiar with the report said the administration is pledging to revise detention standards and will turn to the private sector for ideas, asking for proposals to construct two model facilities.

Until now, the Obama administration has been reluctant to revise detention standards, which were updated late in the administration of former President George W. Bush.

The immigration detention system expanded dramatically during the Bush years as the government took a much tougher line against illegal immigrants.

The moves come in response to criticisms of the system over issues including the quality of medical treatment given to detainees and their inability to access basic services, such as phones to speak with lawyers. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said upon taking office that she would undertake a review of the process.

Ms. Napolitano is expected to announce the moves at a news conference. The officials familiar with Tuesday's announcement said Ms. Napolitano, who has oversight of the immigration detention network through the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency, will also announce plans to develop a new classification system for detainees.

Currently, asylum seekers or other detainees who don't pose a danger can be housed with regular criminals in the U.S. prison system. The goal of the new classification system, officials said, is to avoid mixing criminal and noncriminal detainees.

The Obama administration also will pledge to put in place a screening system to alert officials to special medical or mental-health needs of detainees as they enter detention.

Tuesday's report includes a promise to issue guidelines on alternatives to detaining immigration violators.

The announcement is expected to be criticized as a softening of immigration policy by some Republicans and others who have taken a hard line on illegal immigration. It follows a promise from Obama administration officials in August to alter the detention network.

Officials on Tuesday are expected to announce that they will further centralize and increase oversight of the network, which houses about 32,000 beds at 350 local jails, prisons or private corrections facilities nationwide. Almost 400,000 people cycle through the system each year.

In August, John Morton, the assistant secretary for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, said he would put a government manager inside each of the nation's largest 23 detention facilities to increase and enhance direct federal oversight. The agency is expected to announce that it is doubling the effort, meaning government managers, instead of contractors, will oversee facilities housing 80% of the nation's immigration detainees.

Mr. Morton said in August that the main goal of his overhaul was to make the system less reliant on using prison-like facilities to hold the hundreds of thousands of immigration detainees who pass through the system each year who aren't criminal offenders.

Write to Cam Simpson at cam.simpson@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125479445330366545.html

AKA Amnesty.

Quote:
"Officials familiar with the report said the administration is pledging to revise detention standards and will turn to the private sector for ideas, asking for proposals to construct two model facilities."

Thus creating an expensive new "illegal alien dentention system" industry, with new facilities (with telephones provided by taxpayers so they can call ACLU lawyers), and a raft of new government employees to see to their comfort while they and their children remain in the United States at our expense.

These funds should be used instead to hire new immigration judges and staff to assist them, because these judges say they are overwhelmed with the case load of immigration cases now before them. This will allow our U.S. immigration judges to quickly enforce the legal penalty for illegal entry or visa overstay in the Unted States: Deportation!

Illegal immigrants may be held in hotels, nursing homes

By DENA BUNIS
The Orange County Register
October 6, 2009

Federal officials announce new policy; report suggests linking workplace enforcement and legalization.

WASHINGTON – Illegal immigrants without criminal records may be put in converted hotels and nursing homes, part of a top to bottom restructuring of the detention system that homeland security officials announced this week.

The nation's immigration detention system has long been criticized by advocates as being too punitive, particularly, they have said, when it comes to holding women, children and people with health problems.

Also today, a broad-based panel of immigration experts released a report calling on lawmakers to marry workplace enforcement with any legalization plan of undocumented immigrants. The report, a collaboration of the Brookings Institution and Duke University, also recommends that the U.S. immigration system be shifted from one that focuses on extended family unification to one based on the employment needs of the nation.

"These new initiatives will improve accountability and safety in our detention facilities as we continue to engage in smart and effective enforcement of our nation's immigration laws," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.

The detention overhaul comes after a review of the system conducted over the past several months. It includes:

• Getting a handle on the more than 300 outside contractors running Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers.

• Housing special populations together in particular facilities. For example, ICE plans to consolidate women from several facilities to one residential center in Texas, saving $900,000 a month through the end of the year.

• Hiring more staff. ICE will use more federal employees at its largest facilities instead of relying on outside contractors to monitor these centers, saving $40,000 a year at 30 different facilities.

• Looking at alternatives to traditional detention, particularly for non-criminal undocumented immigrants. ICE will develop a way to classify these immigrants so they are placed in appropriate facilities, lowering costs from about $100 a day to $14 a day.

• Exploring the use of converted hotels or nursing homes as alternatives for holding non-violent, non-criminal detainees.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who chairs the immigration subcommittee, issued a statement saying he would prefer using such technology as ankle bracelets to track non-violent, non-criminal illegal immigrants rather than detaining them.

"Nearly half of detained immigrants have no criminal history,'' Schumer said. "It would be more cost-effective to track these individuals with an electronic monitoring device than to build brand new facilities to detain them."

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Santa Ana, who chairs the House subcommittee with jurisdiction on border and detention matters, was skeptical about Schumer's suggestion. She said she would want to make sure that such people wouldn't become flight risks if they weren't detained some where.

Sanchez does favor putting people in facilities based on risk and background.

"I don't understand why we would put an asylum seeker in with an armed robber or a child or young woman traumatized by sexual exploitation (in) with someone who murdered someone,'' Sanchez said.

Rep. Ed Royce, long an opponent of illegal immigration, would go further than Sanchez. Royce, R-Fullerton, said he wants to see ICE concentrate on quickly deporting those here illegally, thus avoiding the cost of detention.

"The whole goal should be to have a short detention period that leads to removal,'' Royce said. Currently, ICE can quickly deport people caught within 200 miles of the border under a system called "expedited removal.'' Royce would like to see that mileage restriction removed.

Advocates welcomed the detention overhaul but said it's not a substitute for comprehensive reform.

Ali Noorani, head of the National Immigration Forum said the changes "are a step in the right direction to restoring accountability and oversight to a deficient and unruly system, but we also need to reform the broken immigration system that keeps feeding a large number of immigrants into the detention system."

The Brookings/Duke report doesn't address border issues, concentrating instead on getting a workplace enforcement system in place, one that would include a secure identification card. Under their scenario, legalization would be triggered by a successful workplace initiative.

Royce maintains that border and workplace enforcement needs to come first and be proven before any other changes to the system are made.

He does agree with the report's suggestion that family unification in the future be limited to children and spouses of legal U.S. immigrants or citizens and that people coming in the future bring the skills the economy needs.

"It's in the area of unskilled labor where the wage rates are being driven down'' by immigration, said Royce.

The report also suggests the creation of an independent, bipartisan, permanent commission to recommend to Congress future immigration levels and other policy changes.

President Barack Obama said recently he is still committed to comprehensive immigration reform but acknowledged that the health care debate is taking longer than expected.

It's likely to be next year at the earliest before lawmakers turn their attention to immigration.

Contact the writer: Contact the writer at (202) 628-6381 or dbunis@ocregister.com

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/immi ... facilities