Comment from Bill Conroy... Re: Controversial quota drives immigration detention boom...WaPo Molly Molloy, frontera Comment from Bill Conroy, posted with permission. See also the attached chart on Total Illegal Alien Apprehensions By Fiscal Year, 1992-2012. These decline from 1,199,560 in 1992 to 364,768 in 2012 (link to his recent Narco News story on ICE maltreatment of immigrant detainees.) ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ They are “residents,” guarded by unarmed “resident advisers,” and they sleep in air-conditioned, unlocked “suites” with flat-screen TVs overlooking volleyball courts and soccer fields. The low-security facility, built and operated on the government’s behalf by a private contractor, the GEO Group, offers computer labs, libraries and microwaves for making popcorn. Someone fed the WaPo a bowl of BS. The idea that these detainees are living a life of luxury while locked up doesnt make sense If you just do the math. In FY 2012, some 365,000 undocumented immigrants were apprehended by Border Patrol -- almost all on the Southwest border [357,000]. Thats an average of roughly 1,000 per day, 30,000 per month. They all have to be held somewhere for processing before they are turned over to ICE and a longer-term detention facility. If ICE detention facilities are packed with 34,000 souls daily [and no doubt they are], then how are they finding room to add another 1,000 or more souls daily on top of that? The current capacity of the system is 34,000 beds. [immigrationforum.org/images/uploads/mathofimmigrationdetention.pdf]. The immigration/deportation process is not known for its efficiency -- and moving 1,000 people or more per day out of ICE detention facilities [which are designed for stays of several days or longer] to make room for 1,000 or more new detainees that are supposedly being processed into the system each day simply doesnt seem like a realistic logistical possibility given DHSs track record. If detainees are spending even an average of two days in ICE detention facilities, that means new detainees are stuck in limbo for at least that long, since the ICE system is running at full capacity. (And the average stays likely are closer to a week than two days.) So, the good bet is that a great many of those being picked up by Border Patrol daily, literally seven thousand or more people a week, are being warehoused in Border Patrol facilities for days, even weeks, waiting for space at ICE facilities to open up, and the Border Patrol facilities are not designed for that many folks [men, women and children] staying that long. In fact, those facilities are designed for 12-hour stays with room for maybe 300 people -- not 600 or 1,000. Too bad the deeper story of how the system really works was not reported by the Post. narcosphere.narconews/notebook/bill-conroy/2013/10/dhs-investigating-death-detained-honduran-immigrant On Wednesday, October 16, 2013 8:42:45 PM UTC-6, Molly Molloy wrote: washingtonpost/world/controversial-quota-drives-immigration-detention-boom/2013/10/13/09bb689e-214c-11e3-ad1a-1a919f2ed890_story.html Back to previous page Controversial quota drives immigration detention boom By Nick Miroff, Published: October 13 KARNES CITY, Tex. — In the past five years, Homeland Security officials have jailed record numbers of immigrants, driven by a little-known congressional directive known on Capitol Hill as the “bed mandate.” The policy requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to keep an average of 34,000 detainees per day in its custody, a quota that has steadily risen since it was established in 2006 by conservative lawmakers who insisted that the agency wasn’t doing enough to deport unlawful immigrants. But as illegal crossings from Mexico have fallen to near their lowest levels since the early 1970s, ICE has been meeting Congress’s immigration detention goals by reaching deeper into the criminal justice system to vacuum up foreign-born, legal U.S. residents convicted of any crimes that could render them eligible for deportation. The agency also has greatly expanded the number of undocumented immigrants it takes into custody after traffic stops by local police. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials say that they are not needlessly jailing immigrants to meet a quota and that they find plenty of candidates for detention and deportation by targeting criminals who pose a threat to public safety and border security. But critics of the mandate note that the majority of ICE detainees are not violent offenders. Immigration judges eventually allow many to remain in the United States, but the detainees may spend months in costly federal custody, even when far cheaper alternatives are available, such as ankle bracelets and other forms of electronic monitoring. With federal spending on immigration detention and deportation reaching $2.8 billion a year, more than doubling since 2006, the mandate has met growing skepticism from budget hawks in both parties, particularly after DHS officials told Congress during the “sequestration” debate in April that the agency could save money by lowering the bed mandate to 31,800 and relying on cheaper alternatives to jails. But House Republicans successfully pushed back, set the mandate at 34,000 detainees and ordered ICE officials to spend nearly $400 million more than they requested. ICE operations are largely unaffected by the government shutdown, since the agency’s workers are among the federal employees considered essential, DHS officials have said. Some of the additional money provided by Congress will be spent filling beds at places such as the brightly painted Karnes County Civil Detention Center, which opened here last year amid bobbing oil derricks on the rolling plains south of San Antonio. It holds more than 600 detainees, but ICE prefers not to call them that. They are “residents,” guarded by unarmed “resident advisers,” and they sleep in air-conditioned, unlocked “suites” with flat-screen TVs overlooking volleyball courts and soccer fields. The low-security facility, built and operated on the government’s behalf by a private contractor, the GEO Group, offers computer labs, libraries and microwaves for making popcorn. “This place is great,” said one young man from Honduras, strumming a government-issued bass guitar in a recreation room, along with newfound band mates from El Salvador and Guatemala. Most detainees here are Central American migrants picked up along the border. Having requested asylum, they await an ICE interview to determine if they have a legitimate fear of returning home. In the meantime, they can earn $3 a day working on cleaning crews or in the laundry room, and there are free English classes, “life skills” instruction and tutorials in Microsoft Word and Excel. They dine in a cafeteria cheerfully appointed with Southwestern art and Georgia O’Keefe prints. The jail has become a showcase for improved detention conditions, especially as ICE relies less on the low-cost bed space offered by aging, rural county jails and signs contacts with for-profit private detention companies that include incentives such as guaranteed minimum-occupancy payments. Congress’s expanding detention goals have been a boon to the contractors, especially Florida-based GEO Group and Tennessee-based Corrections Corp. of America. The two companies have won hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of ICE contracts in recent years while lobbying Congress on immigration enforcement issues. Former ICE director Julie Myers Wood, who led the agency from 2006 to 2008 under President George W. Bush, said a congressional mandate for ICE to maintain a minimum number of detainees was a reasonable guideline at the outset of her tenure, when the Border Patrol was making more than a million arrests per year. But today, she said, “it doesn’t make sense.” Defenders of the bed mandate say it remains a useful tool to compel ICE to devote the maximum amount of resources to catching and deporting illegal migrants and foreign-born legal residents who commit crimes, including dangerous gang members, rapists and other violent felons. With an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, they argue, there’s still a vast pool of potential deportees for the agency to pursue, or as Rep. John Abney Culberson (R-Tex.) put it, “plenty of customers.” “We know ICE can fill more than 34,000 beds, so why would they use less?” said Culberson, a member of the House Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, which ties ICE funding to its compliance with the mandate. Four countries — Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — accounted for 88 percent of all immigration detainees in 2011, the most recent year for which statistics were available. Broad range of offenses As illegal border crossings have declined, a growing portion of ICE detainees are legal U.S. residents who face deportation after completing a jail term or probation, targeted by ICE’s Secure Communities program. Of the 33,391 immigrants held in federal custody on Sept. 7 — a single-day snapshot provided by ICE — 19,864 were convicted criminals, according to the agency. Yet ICE’s definition of criminals includes a broad range of offenders, and a 2009 internal review found that only 11 percent of detainees had been convicted of violent crimes. Jose Luis Vargas, a legal U.S. resident since 1986, was arrested by San Antonio police three years ago after neighbors reported a marijuana plant growing in his garden, among his tomatoes and prickly pear cactus. Vargas, 52, said he had planned to make a poultice with the plant to alleviate joint pain from diabetes, which has left him with impaired vision and an amputated finger. After two years on probation for the marijuana charge, ICE officials took Vargas into custody and tried to deport him to Mexico. He spent nearly three months in ICE’s South Texas Detention Facility until an immigration judge ordered his release. “They didn’t treat me badly, but when I’d have to ride to the hospital, I’d miss lunch, and being in handcuffs so much was bad for my circulation,” Vargas said. Immigrant rights advocates say detainees such as Vargas, who was two years shy of paying off the 30-year mortgage on his San Antonio home, should be allowed to remain under cheaper, less severe forms of ICE supervision, such as GPS-enabled electronic monitoring. Those alternatives can cost less than $10 a day, they say, while the cost of keeping someone in immigration jail exceeds $150. “The explicit purpose of ICE detaining people is to make sure they show up for their immigration hearings, so it would make sense to consider less costly, more humane alternatives that meet that same goal,” said Ruthie Epstein, legislative policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union. Immigrant advocates and attorneys say the majority of detainees taken into ICE custody today have convictions for lesser offenses such as drug possession — or no criminal record at all. Nearly 48 percent of the 350,000 immigrants over the past 16 months who triggered an “ICE detainer” — a request by the agency that local jails or police hold an individual until ICE can pick them up — had no criminal convictions, not even traffic violations, according to the TRAC Immigration Project. Almost half of all potential deportees who appear in immigration court are allowed to remain in the United States, according to TRAC data. But many end up spending months, even years, in ICE custody while they await a ruling. Detention alternatives ICE officials have testified to Congress that Alternatives to Detention programs — geared toward legal residents with family and community ties — have had compliance rates of 96 percent with court-ordered appearances. Yet the agency’s budget for alternatives is less than $100 million, dwarfed by its detention budget. The comprehensive immigration bill approved by the Senate in June would expand use of these methods, but the legislation faces increasingly dim prospects in the House. ICE officials also note that they have limited discretion over which detainees are eligible for alternative forms of supervision. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 greatly expanded the scope of crimes that could trigger deportation. More than two-thirds of the immigrants in ICE custody on Sept. 7, for instance, were “mandatory cases,” including drug offenders, violent offenders and anyone involved in prostitution-related crimes, among other violations that trigger automatic detention. Pending immigration legislation would give greater discretion to federal judges to assign detention on a case-by-case basis. “We’re not forcing poor little people to be in there to meet a quota,” said Rep. John Carter (R-Tex.), chairman of the House Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee. “The law is the law, and none of these people are being held contrary to the law,” he said. © The Washington Post Company --- nationwide_appr_2000_2012.Rio.pdf 20K View Download
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 01:48:12 +0000
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