New Review Policy for Migrant Families in Detention
By JULIA PRESTON
MAY 13, 2015
Migrant families in detention will have more frequent case
reviews to determine if they can be released, Department of Homeland Security
officials said Wednesday. Women with their children being held in three family
detention centers will have a first review after 90 days and then every two
months after that. The immigration authorities will no longer point to a
general goal of deterring illegal border crossing as the reason for detaining
women and children. But the authorities will continue to place a high priority
on deporting or detaining migrants caught crossing the border illegally.
Central American women seeking asylum and their children have faced many months
in detention while their cases moved through the immigration courts. “The new
policy is designed to continually re-evaluate whether detention is necessary”
for them, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said.
End Immigration Detention
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
MAY 15, 2015
Of all the malfunctioning parts in the country’s broken-down
immigration machinery, probably the most indefensible is the detention system.
This is the vast network of jails and prisons where
suspected immigration violators are held while awaiting a hearing and possible
deportation. Immigrant detainees are not criminal defendants or convicts
serving sentences. They are locked up merely because the government wants to
make sure they show up in immigration court.
Detention is intended to help enforce the law, but, in
practice, the system breeds cruelty and harm, and squanders taxpayer money. It
denies its victims due process of law, punishing them far beyond the scale of
any offense. It shatters families and traumatizes children. As a system of mass
incarceration — particularly of women and children fleeing persecution in
Central America — it is immoral.
The director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE,
Sarah Saldaña, on Wednesday announced a set of reforms to the family detention
system. Federal officials do this from time to time after advocates and
journalists expose — as they have for years — the abuses within detention
walls. Ms. Saldaña says she wants the “optimal level of care” for detainees,
and so she will create a committee and give lawyers more working space to meet
with clients, among other things.
But committees and cubicles won’t touch the heart of the
problem. It’s time to end mass detention, particularly of families. Shut the
system down, and replace it with something better.
A powerful case for ending immigration detention, along with
an array of alternatives, is made in a new report from the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Center for Migration Studies. It traces
how the system has grown immense, from housing 85,000 detainees in 1995 to more
than 440,000 in 2013. There are many reasons for this growth, including state
and local immigration crackdowns, federal dragnet programs like Secure
Communities and the flood of money from Congress to the private prison
operators that have profited so fruitfully from immigrant criminalization. The
system has gotten more sprawling and scandal-prone, but reforms don’t stick.
The notorious Hutto family detention center in Texas, where children went to
classes in prison scrubs, stopped housing families. But the surge of families
at the border seeking refuge last year created a political crisis and led the
department to resurrect family detention, with new centers with thousands of
prison beds for mothers and children.
USCCB (Catholic
Bishops) Committee on Migration Issues Report on Immigrant Detention, Calls For
a ‘Transformation’ of the System
May 11, 2015
Alternatives to detention should be expanded
Vulnerable groups should not be detained
Role of for-profit prisons should be substantially reduced
WASHINGTON—The U.S. immigrant detention system, which treats
vulnerable immigrant detainees as criminals, needs extensive reforms, said
representatives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and the
Center for Migration Studies, May 11, as they released a report and policy
recommendations. They urged Congress and the administration to build a system
that affords due process protections, honors human dignity and minimizes the
use of detentions.
“It is time for our
nation to reform this inhumane system, which unnecessarily detains persons,
especially vulnerable populations, who are no threat to us and who should be
afforded due process and legal protections,” said Bishop Eusebio Elizondo,
auxiliary bishop of Seattle and chairman of the USCCB Committee on Migration.
Such vulnerable groups include asylum-seekers, families and children, and
victims of human trafficking.
The report, “Unlocking Human Dignity: A Plan to Transform
the U.S. Immigrant Detention System,” was written and produced by the Center
for Migration Studies (CMS), a Catholic-based educational institute that
studies migration, and Migration and Refugee Services of USCCB.
“The presumption is to detain immigrants as a management,
enforcement and deterrence tool rather than to make individual custody
determinations based on family and community ties” Bishop Elizondo said. “This
has resulted in the long-term detention of asylum-seekers, victims of human
trafficking, survivors of torture, and, now, young mothers with children.”
Statistics from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) indicate that as many
as 34,000 immigrants are detained each day and over 400,000 each year.
Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn, New York, member of
the committee and chair of CMS, pointed to the availability of alternatives to
detention, such as community-based case management models, which are proven to
be both cost-effective and successful in ensuring that immigrants appear at
their court proceedings.
“There are ways to create a humane system and also ensure
that immigrants are complying with the law,” Bishop DiMarzio said. “But we have
created a detention industry in this country which preys upon the vulnerability
of our fellow human beings, the vast majority of whom are not criminals.”
Donald Kerwin, executive director of the Center for
Migration Studies, pointed to the prevalence of for-profit companies, which
view detention as a business opportunity, in administering detention
facilities. “Detention policy, which directly impacts the human rights and
dignity of persons, should not be driven by a profit motive. Detention wastes
not only government funds, but the human potential of hundreds of thousands of
persons each year,” Kerwin said.
The report, which contains recommendations for changing the
current detention system, can be found at
http://www.usccb.org/about/migration-and-refugee-services/upload/unlocking-human-dignity.pdf
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Keywords: U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, USCCB,
Migration and Refugee Services, MRS, Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, Bishop Nicholas
DiMarzio, Committee on Migration, detention center, family detention,
immigration, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Congress, Center for
Migration Studies
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MEDIA CONTACT:
Norma Montenegro Flynn
O: 202-541-3202
