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"Administration Plans Overhaul of Immigration Detention System"
By: Spencer Hsu
Washington Post
The Obama administration announced plans Thursday to overhaul the nation's much-criticized immigration detention system by strengthening federal oversight and centralizing a 32,000-bed system now scattered throughout 350 local jails, state prisons and contract facilities, officials said.
The goal in three to five years is to redesign and begin rebuilding a system that houses immigration violators in fewer locations, closer to major cities with access to courts, attorneys and medical care, under conditions that more consistently meet federal detention standards, said John Morton, director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"With these reforms ICE will move away from our present decentralized jail approach to a system that is wholly designed for and based on civil detention needs, and the needs of the people we detain," Morton told reporters.
"We need a system that is open, transparent and accountable," said Morton, who along with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has led a review of operations that house nearly 400,000 immigration violators a year.
The moves mark a repudiation of the immigration policies of President George W. Bush. Beginning after the 2001 terrorist attacks and accelerating as Washington took a "get-tough" approach to illegal immigration, ICE's detention system exploded in a multi-billion dollar build-up, more than tripling in size over the past decade as the federal government geared up deportations.
However, civil liberties and immigration law groups alleged the system was rife with problems. Although most immigration violators have no criminal record and are held pending removal on administrative grounds, detainees are subject to penal system practices, typically confined in jail cells, prison blocks or remote detention centers where they face strict confinement and group punishment for disciplinary infractions.
Investigators have also faulted ICE for providing substandard and sometimes fatal medical care, failing to meet federal standards for access to telephones, pro bono legal counsel, food and clothing.
"What we have seen is a system that is really just somewhat flawed. There is absolutely no direct federal oversight at many of our facilities," an ICE official said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement Friday morning.
Morton will assign a federal manager to each of 23 of ICE's largest detention centers. He is creating a new Office of Detention Policy and Planning, headed by Dora Schriro, a former state corrections official in Arizona and aide to Napolitano, to lead the overhaul. The office will work with two advisory boards including immigrant advocates focused on detention policies and health care, the official said.
"We are not talking getting into the personal business of directing detention centers," the official said. "We are designing and planning a civil detention system that is going to be tailored to our needs and then rely on experts in detention to run them."
It is unclear what fiscal impact the changes will have on budget-strapped local and state governments, which have raised revenue by renting out spare jail and prison beds to house federal immigration detainees on a fee-per-head basis. Consolidating ICE detainees elsewhere could cost those jurisdictions $80 to $100 per day per bed.
The initiative also is likely to shake up the private corrections industry, which has enjoyed a mini-boom from ICE's expansion and nearly $3 billion-a-year detention budget. ICE's main contractors include Corrections Corporation of America, The Geo Group, Inc., and Management and Training Corporation.
ICE officials said it was too soon to gauge the cost of the initiative, or whether the expense of restructuring detention operations might be taken up by Congress when it has pledged to debate overhauling the nation's immigration laws in coming months.
In any case, Congressional Democrats have pressed ICE to make reforms, under heavy pressure from legal groups and civil rights organizations. Pending legislation would force ICE to set legally enforceable detention standards, for example, replacing 38 nonbinding detention guidelines that the federal government has negotiated with the American Bar Association.
The legal battle underscores a key problem identified by DHS policy officials. Immigration detainees are not guaranteed the protections provided to citizens or criminal defendants, including access to public defenders. Instead, federal guidelines are supposed to provide them law libraries, telephones and phone numbers for legal aid.
However a series of government investigators and lawsuits by private groups including the American Civil Liberties Union have found repeated breakdowns.
Detainees often are improperly barred from making even a single phone call to a lawyer and cannot file grievances or seek consular help because of inadequate internal ICE procedures. Many detainees are transferred to remote facilities 1,500 miles or more from relatives and hundreds of miles from lawyers, virtually cutting off access to counsel because some judges do not permit hearings by teleconference.
Some senior DHS officials have advocated concentrating detention centers in perhaps 10 cities to ensure access to lawyers and oversight.
