Thread: More Detententions of illegals; jail overcrowding

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...tory?track=rss

This is an LA Times story and requires registration with the LA Times (it's free) to read it:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...tory?track=rss

Here's the first few liines of the story: To cope with the numbers, federal officials speed up deportations, transfer more people between facilities and use more private jails.
By Anna Gorman, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 5, 2007
Aggressive immigration enforcement has led to record numbers of detainees in California and around the nation, prompting the federal government to speed up deportations and increasingly rely on transfers and contracts with local jails and private companies.

The detainee population jumped to nearly 27,900 nationwide in fiscal year 2007, up from about 19,700 the previous year, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In California, the population increased to more than 3,700, up from a little more than 3,200 last year.

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Two weeks ago, the population surpassed 30,000 nationally and nearly reached 4,000 in California.

The main reason cited for the upward trend is the government's decision to end its practice of catching immigrants and immediately releasing them.

Detention is the only way to guarantee that people leave the country when their deportation is ordered, immigration officials said. Fewer than a third of people out of custody leave the country when ordered to do so, despite being under intensive supervision.

"If we have them detained and they are ordered removed, it's almost a virtual certainty that they will, in fact, be removed," said Gary Mead, assistant director of the immigration agency's Detention and Removal Operations.

"Everything short of detention is less effective to one degree or another."

The number of immigrants deported has risen to more than 261,000 in fiscal 2007, up from about 177,000 two years ago. The 2007 fiscal year ended Sept. 30.

Organizations opposing illegal immigration praise the government for locking up and deporting more immigrants.

"The administration has finally realized they needed to dramatically ramp up their detention capacity if immigration enforcement is ever to be credible," said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the conservative Center for Immigration Studies.

But immigrants and their advocates say the high numbers have led to crowded conditions and have limited some immigrants' access to medical care.

Detainees at the San Pedro Processing Center on Terminal Island often had to sleep on inflatable beds on the floor and had difficulty getting access to phones, immigrants and their attorneys said.

The detention center, opened in the 1930s, was temporarily shut down last month for maintenance.

"The overcrowding at San Pedro was crazy," said former detainee Eugene Peba, who was denied asylum from Nigeria and is awaiting a federal appellate court ruling. "They didn't have enough employees to take care of the detainees' day-to-day problems."

In July, the U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that populations at four facilities, including San Pedro and a center in San Diego, were over capacity. The report also noted "systemic" problems with telephones in detention centers and isolated problems with medical care and use-of-force policies.

"When the number of people in detention is increasing but the number of people assigned by the government to oversee that detention is not, problems are bound to increase and keep increasing," said Ranjana Natarajan, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Immigration officials defended conditions and said there is no overcrowding. In fiscal 2007, they said, the facilities run by ICE were at 95% capacity and the contracted private centers were at 98% capacity. The phone situation has been fixed and the centers' telephones, along with speed-dial numbers for attorneys and consulates, are checked weekly to make sure they are working, they said.

The agency also has taken several steps in recent months to improve oversight, including working with a private company that provides full-time inspectors and placing outside "quality assurance" specialists at the 40 biggest facilities, authorities said. Previously, inspections were done once a year at each facility.

"When we find a deficiency, we correct it," Mead said. "I don't believe we have any systemic problems."

The immigration agency's budget for bed space skyrocketed to $945 million last year, up from $641 million in fiscal year 2005.

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