Detention Reform: At Last

October 06, 2009

good plans must be followed by action

Washington, DC – Today, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) made public a review of its scandal-plagued immigration detention system.  With the release of the report, DHS committed to a series of changes to create a detention system more appropriate to a largely non-criminal population that is charged with committing administrative immigration law offenses.

The following is a statement by Ali Noorani, Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, a non-partisan, non-profit pro-immigrant advocacy organization in Washington.

The commitments made today by Secretary Napolitano and Assistant Secretary Morton come not a moment too soon. Years of negligence and inhumane conditions in immigration detention need to be undone now. The announced changes to immigration detention 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. 

We welcome the Agency’s shift in tone, recognizing that most immigration detainees are nonviolent and noncriminal.  When immigrants accused of civil violations are held in the same cells as those who are serving time for serious crimes, the distinction altogether disappears. 

We are encouraged that Secretary Napolitano and Assistant Secretary Morton acknowledged that alternatives to detention should be expanded and utilized for many of the nearly 400,000 individuals a year who are currently jailed while their immigration cases are processed.  It is long overdue that DHS began implementing those cost-saving alternatives for immigrants who are behind bars for nothing other than paperwork violations. 

Providing a minimum level of health care to detainees is a basic human right that has been neglected by DHS for far too long and, sadly, comes far too late for many.  In addition to poor medical care, the conditions of confinement in many immigration jails have often fallen below even those set out in the detention standards ICE itself created.  Restoring meaningful oversight of the immigration detention complex may result in more uniformity and fewer instances of squalid jails and immigrants lost in the system.

We believe that the Administration must do more than merely acknowledge that sound medical care is a principle of immigration detention.  Alternatives to detention must be found for those charged with immigration violations who are sick, pregnant, or physically or mentally disabled. These measures are not only humane and efficient, they also make economic sense. 

Ultimately, a humane detention system will come only when Congress acts to reform our immigration laws.  We are detaining hundreds of thousands of people a year because they want to work here, but there is no legal means for them to do so.  Instead of overtime, they are getting jail time.  That is the ultimate waste of taxpayer dollars.

###