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Broken System: A Look at U.S. Immigration Detention

2-8-2012

By Marc Jayson Climaco
New Media Content Specialist
Broken System: A Look at U.S. Immigration Detention [ 13 min 01 s | 12.04 MB ] Play in Popup | Download (13346)

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In this special edition of Firstcast, we feature the voices of a recently detained asylum seeker, whom we can call Michael, and Human Rights First’s Ruthie Epstein to discuss the broken system of U.S. immigration detention.

Drawn by the promise of the Statue of Liberty, refugees flee to the United States seeking freedom.  But too often, the U.S. government welcomes them with handcuffs and jail. For many years, Human Rights First has worked to correct this injustice.  We achieved an important victory in 2009 when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) publicly announced that it would shift away from a penal model of detention to one more appropriate for immigration detainees.

But two years later–as we found in our recent report, “Jails and Jumpsuits”, the overwhelming majority of the nearly 400,000 detainees ICE holds annually are still held in jails or jail-like facilities—at a cost to U.S. taxpayers of more than $2 billion a year. A full 50 percent of ICE’s beds are in actual jails.

Our report notes that former prison officials and other corrections experts have found that less penal conditions in detention can actually help improve safety inside a facility, a finding echoed in multiple studies. It outlines steps that the administration should take to end its reliance on facilities with conditions that are inappropriate for asylum seekers and other civil immigration law detainees, and to bring U.S. detention practices into compliance with international human rights standards.

Read our latest report: Jails and Jumpsuits: Transforming the U.S. Immigration Detention System – A Two-Year Review.


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Posted in Blog | 1 Comment »

  • Halibut

    “Our report recommends that ICE permit detainees to receive visitors, wear their own clothing, move freely, have at least partial privacy in the bathroom and access to email and recreational activities.” Sure. Why not let them go out and get a job while you’re at it. I always thought that part of the purpose for incarceration or in this case detention was to deter violators of the law from continuing to violate the law. But of course those who make these kinds of demands don’t believe that being in the country illegally is a violation that warrants repercussions. After all, it’s not like they killed someone.
    Just remember that a large majority of those who are being held in detention are criminals or illegal aliens who have already had one scheduled appointment with a judge, but didn’t show up. I see no point to being lenient with those who have not complied with a court order.