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White House Raises Hopes for Kinder, Gentler Immigrant Detention
The latest reform proposals for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention have received cautious praise from rights groups. The report, authored by out-going Obama appointee Dora Schriro (who abruptly pulled out of Washington to run corrections in New York). leaves Homeland Security head Janet Napolitano with a slew of ideas for making the detention regime less miserable, and tens of thousands of immigrants locked up for unclear reasons that the government, under current policy, need never explain.
The 35-page report offers some positive-sounding terminology and minimal details:
ICE should develop a new set of standards, assessments, and classification tools to inform care, custody restrictions, privileges, programs, and delivery of services consistent with risk level and medical care needs of the population. ICE should expand access to legal materials and counsel, visitation, and religious practice. ICE should also develop unique provisions for serving special populations such as women, families, and asylum seekers.
In the wake of harrowing tales about detainees dying in custody the recommendations include setting up a "well-managed medical care system, with comprehensive initial assessments to inform housing assignments and ongoing care management."
Other potential reforms include offering detainees more recreational activities, "enhancing the family visitation meeting rooms," accommodating detainees' religious beliefs and practices, and facilitating contact with attorneys. Longer-range improvements might include comprehensive mental health treatment to minimize trauma and suicidal tendencies. Some modicum of personal privacy protection for women might be beneficial, and windows in the cells would be nice, too.
The New York Times reports that ICE has explored housing non-threatening immigrants in converted hotel and nursing-home spaces rather than behind bars.
But from these incremental reform ideas emerges a curious picture of a bizarre alternate universe, lacking accountability or even logic. The administration might improve the ambiance with a fresh coat of paint, spacious rec rooms and textbooks for school children. Nonetheless, the central, defining reality of detention remains the banishment of hundreds of thousands for violating a system of rules that is itself guilty of systematically violating rights.
Perhaps that's why the report is more useful for what it reveals about the current state of detention. While the majority of detainees come through crackdowns on criminal immigrants and federal-local partnership under the 287(g) program, the report acknowledges that “The majority of the population is characterized as low custody, or having a low propensity for violence.” Of the initial book-ins under the aptly named Criminal Alien Program, 57 percent were deemed “non-criminal” in fiscal year 2009, up from 53 percent the year before. At the start of September, some two-thirds of the detainee population was subject to mandatory detention—a practice that advocacy groups have denounced as an assault on basic due process rights.
ACLU Legislative Counsel Joanne Lin commented Tuesday on the twisted logic undergirding the system:
The new DHS detention initiatives fail to examine the pipeline that channels hundreds of thousands of people into ICE detention in the first place. … In order to truly reform and improve its immigration detention system, DHS must reform the ICE enforcement programs that are herding masses of people into ICE detention every day.
ICE's promised reforms are a partial answer to issues raised by activists and officials over the years. But the White House still has yet to answer to one key constituency: the families devastated every day by mass incarceration, who pose just one simple question: why?
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11 Comments so far
Show All"But the White House still has yet to answer to one key constituency: the families devastated every day by mass incarceration, who pose just one simple question: why?"
Why....because the person or person's involved choose to break our laws and come here illegally. Their families are more than welcome to go with them, so stop trotting out that old chestnut. They choose to go or stay, we are a free country.
Try the hospitality of North Korea or Iran or Mexico for that matter if you feel we are too harsh.
Trying to make the results of illegally crossing our border or staying in our country illegally more user friendly is simply playiong into the hads of the human traffikers, the Corporations and business's that exploit and cheat these people and a betrayal of all American citizens.
Supporting and advocating illegal immigration in any way is simply a rejection of human rights, an avowal that these people are not really people, just commodities.
People like this writer with her pretended moral superiority ,uninvolved interjections and uninformed conclusions are among the worst of the violators.
H8 wrote:
"Trying to make the results of illegally crossing our border or staying in our country illegally more user friendly is simply playiong into the hads of the human traffikers, the Corporations and business's that exploit and cheat these people and a betrayal of all American citizens... Supporting and advocating illegal immigration in any way is simply a rejection of human rights, an avowal that these people are not really people, just commodities."
Thanks for the lesson in morality, bigot. The answer is that NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL. And the FACT is that YOU are playing into the hands of the human traffickers.
Read what i wrote to the other bigot:
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OBTW, if you are truly concerned about victims of corporate exploitation, the thing to attack is the CORPORATION, not the VICTIM.
Bigot and LIAR.
Henry, the US should first quit forcing people to come.
Clearly, when the US sends troops to break strikes in other countries, when the US overthrows leaders who it cannot successfully bribe or threaten --- when the US moves to eliminate all other sources of succor, the arrival of its victims at its doors should constitute small surprise.
Then, after forcing people to come, insisting on calling them illegals creates many of the circumstances you rightly rail against.
When someone's incarcerated, their families cannot usually "go with them." Typically they have no idea where the family member is, even if they know that a raid happened at work or whatever. Frequently we're talking about children or people without bus fare here. They have no guarantee of being received when they arrive or even of not being mistreated. On top of that, when people are released, they're usually released in places far from their point of origin.
When someone goes "back to Mexico" it may still be just a bit hard to find Mom or Dad in the couple million square miles that Mexico covers.
Having tried both the hospitality of Mexico and the United States, I do not find Mexico wanting.
Immigration, especially temporary long-term immigration, is a rotten situation, especially for the immigrants. You have that stone right, and I wish more progressive Americans recognized that. It's heartbreaking to meet folks in little Mexican towns whose major cash crop is cheap labor for the American market. They meet with their wives and children a couple months a year -- at Christmas or Easter or at some time other than harvest or planting.
You have to figure there's a mirror tragedy somewhere over the border, with a girlfriend or a second wife who never feels completely comfortable.
No, no more support for the PRI, none for the PAN, no more fat IMF presents for the new thugs in Honduras, none for the narcotraficantes and the government in Columbia. (And none for FARC, either: what a mess!) No more threats to Chavez or Ortega or Evo Morales.
When we get some solidarity with the folks who grow our food and make our clothing, we will see some balance of emigration and immigration.
The lack of solidarity on both sides of the border hurts.
Bullshit!There ain't no such animal as "a kinder,gentler detention".It is an oxymoron and as for the detainees it is going to be like everything else this screwed up gov. has been doing.The detainee's are getting the time and punishment for being coaxed into coming here and the "higher ups" that did the coaxing will just go get some other ileagal to continue.As I said;bullshit.Tony
As i wrote on the other thread where these HATEFUL BIGOTS posted their trash:
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CZ and H8 need to get a clue.
Actually and factually, immigrants CREATE more economic activity and jobs than they "take".
I'm very curious - does your job "take" someone else's job? Or does your economic activity add to the overall economy?
Or is it only immigrants who "take" other people's jobs? You job stealer!
Your ignorance is astonishing.
And as i followed up to CZ when they attacked and name-called:
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Thanks for NOT RESPONDING to what i wrote.
This "shill for AG" in your fantasy, is a grocery store worker.
Oh by the way - how is it that "others'" jobs are STOLEN from somebody, but YOUR job is not "STOLEN" from anyone? How does that math work again? Oh yeah, you don't actually respond, you just invent imaginary people to attack.
Bigot.
OBTW, if you are truly concerned about victims of corporate exploitation, the thing to attack is the CORPORATION, not the VICTIM.
Bigot and LIAR.
Why are you still trolling at Common Dreams? Chomp your own zombie.
webwalk,
you ask too much in suggesting henry8 aka thomas more get a clue. clueless people haven't a clue in how to get one.
it's amazing to see him still here, posting his same racist comments, full of his white male superiority complex.
little discussion is given to the fact that many of these "illegal immigrants" (by the way, hank, where exactly did your forefathers "immigrate" from????) are doing the work that many lazy americans would never ever consider doing.
throw racists and hypocrites on top of the bigot and liar description, then you have a fairly accurate summation of the situation.
US Out of Mexico! Until the US government stops its militarization of countries like Mexico, Honduras, and Colombia, all the faux liberal haters of what they call 'illegal immigration' should simply shut themselves up. It is simply just too nauseating to see your hate speech jumbled in with silly rhetoric about 'breaking our laws' and blah, blah, blah..
Jawhol, liberal schweinhund? My Lord, what happened in here?
News flash for Beck/Dobbs devotee's. Illegal immigration is not a new or, comparatively emergent problem.
Reagan, as Governor of California, abolished the Bracero Program, which was faulty but at least endeavored to manage migrant farm workers as a necessary element in our economy. Nixon sent Kissinger to Mexico, and while negotiating logistics for poisoning the marijuana fields, cut the Border Patrol in half. By the mid-70s, tens of thousands were deported each month and came right back, because bipartisan, annual amnesties were, and actually are, in effect. Show a year old check stub, get a green card, basically. We have always incentivized illegal immigration. If you wouldn't swim that river to better life for your family, I submit that you are a coward.
What Nixon DID accomplish, was accidentally ending a ten year long drug war in the Southwest US, by handing a monopoly to the Columbian Cartels, creating a cocaine epidemic. Thanks, Dick.
If you are a "conservative" that hates Unions you should be in the streets kissing illegal aliens. Our wages have flat lined for 30 years. The middle class has had to borrow it's way in, and if you haven't noticed, somebody called in their markers, and it's all over but the crying for many of us.
In 2003 DHS contracted GeoGroup and others to assist ICE with detention prior to deportation. Dick Cheney owns 85 Million bucks worth of that industry. They are increasing their facilities by 50% this year for greater capacity. They get paid by the body in a cell and there is no incentive for deportation. These companies have been convicted of felony child abuse and allegations of murder, conspiracy, and felony conflict of interest on the parts of Cheney and Gonzales have been made.
The contract was to deport 12 million people by 2012, which would have been the largest forced migration of a people, since the theft of indigenous lands in America. Have you noticed a big difference in the number of illegal aliens? Dick Cheney took your money and he's laughing all the way to the bank.
Perhaps you should learn to capitalize on human suffering like Uncle Dick. Either that, or you could take advantage of our educational system, and acquire skills that won't be threatened by an illegal alien.
Except when you're copying and pasting statistics and talking points from anti-Hispanic websites, your arguments are generally bereft of facts or logic. The only reasonable explanation for the hyperbole and histrionics is racism. Are you visitors from that Storm Front place?
I see every Hispanic immigrant as a potential labor organizer. Stick around clown. If you think it's rough now, you're going to love America's future.