American Gulag : Inside U.s. Immigration Prisons

In the fiscal year of 2014, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) stated that they conducted approximately 315,943 removals of individuals (ICE, 2014). This number includes undocumented immigrants, permanent residents, children, asylum seekers, and victims of human trafficking. The United States holds on average 380,000 to 442,000 persons in immigrant detention facilities per year (CIVIC, 2015). Immigrant Detention Centers hold individuals with migrant status who are in waiting of their removal proceeding decision made by the Department of Justice. Detention facilities ideally should model a civil system yet the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE have transformed

For my research topic, I will be exploring the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and post-9/11 border militarization on the issues of criminalization of immigration and the inequality and structural violence immigrants face in detention centers specifically at the U.S.-Mexico Border. National awareness on issues such as oversight of detention centers, conditions within detention centers, as well as the inhumane practices detained immigrants are subjected to have risen within the last decade. Immigration detention has become the fastest growing form of incarceration in the United States, and immigrants are the fastest growing population in federal prisons (Lopez & Light, 2009). Nearly 30,000 immigrants are detained

The conditions within the immigrant detention facilities are absolutely horrendous. According to ThinkProgress.org, as of 2016, nine of the 10 largest detention centers in the country are run by private prison companies. In the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a detention facility that was once a medium security prison was sued by American Civil Liberties Union for the “prison-like” conditions they put children and families in. “Children were required to wear prison jumpsuits, held in small cells, and limited to an hour of outdoor playtime per day.” 29 year old, Zelaya was forced to manage her sickle cell anemia without treatment, developed serious stomach problems, and fell into a deep depression while at this detention center. This is only one story amongst several others across the U.S.

Many people assume that racist legislation put into place in the 1960’s and 70’s led to the mass incarceration of the minority groups. Since these acts have been put into place, the United States has been named the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world, by an astounding amount. Former president Barack Obama states, “The United States is home to 5 percent of the world population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Think about that.” Barack Obama is insisting that citizens of the United states need to

Although illegal immigrants only make up less than four percent of the total population in the United States, five percent of the population in both state and federal prisons is made up of those who are not United States citizens. Between 2010 and 2014, 121 illegal immigrants who were released from immigration custody were later charged with murder (Shoichet, 2015). Figures show that immigrants are three times more likely to be convicted of murder than the general population. Each year, approximately 900,000 legal and illegal immigrants are arrested, and 700,000 of these end up being released. Illegal immigrants account for 12 percent of murder sentences, 20 percent of kidnapping sentences, and 16

Immigration is one of the central themes of the founding of the United States and as such it is often the epicenter of controversy among both citizens and policymakers. Throughout the twentieth century, American citizens and policymakers have brought to the forefront the importance of immigration and the role immigrants play within society. This can be a cause of friction between immigrants and multi-generational citizens because immigrants are often viewed with a negative connotation. They are often blamed for stealing jobs from hardworking citizens, draining the healthcare system and adding to the homeless population. They are associated with crime, poverty and in general they are perceived as undesirable members of society (Spenkuch, 2014). The relationship between crime and immigrants is of particular importance because there is a common perception that immigrants cause crime and their neighborhoods are riddled with criminal activity. Also important to note is that the characteristics of immigrants tend to coincide with members of the native-born population that are disproportionally incarceration. In general, they are poorly educated, earn low wages and are young, males. This led to the perception that incoming immigrants continuously add to the lower class, criminal population. In order to clearly understand the relationship between the two concepts they must be examined both from a theoretical and empirical viewpoint

This paper will attempt to validate the abusive nature within ICE’s Immigration Detention Centers. Specifically, the abuse that women and children suffer by high risk detainees and ICE agents within the detention centers. Additionally, this paper will also challenge the infrastructure along the southwest border, specifically on overcrowded and antiquated detention centers. Furthermore, how the financial impact to detain, process and release or deportation of undocumented immigrants has become a burden on U.S. tax payers. Lastly, how the lack of concern for human rights has become a crisis at the U.S. and Mexican border.

Although events such as San Bernardino in 2015 provide anecdotal evidence of immigrants committing acts of extreme violence, these events are extremely rare. Nonetheless, tragedies such as these inevitably grab headlines and capture the attention of millions of Americans across the country. Tragedies such as the attack in San Bernardino hold strong emotional appeal to proponents for restrictive immigration policy. However, these rare and uncontrollable events should not provide the base of logic for America’s national immigration policy as they are not a proxy for immigrant behavior as a whole. Various statistics regarding crime among immigrants may reveal an underlying reason for lower crime rates, which is that the majority of immigrants understand the implications of committing a crime and know that it would not be in their best interest as a new member of the country they wish to call home. Natives, moreover, have crime rates five times that of immigrants. This demonstrates the potential positive externalities that immigrants contribute to the social sphere by lowering the crime rate and acting as models within urban America.

Equalizing the constitutional rights of prisoners and the functions of the jail or prison can create great strain on not only the correctional facilities’ staff but on the inmates as well. The treatment of prisoners is typically left completely to the prudence of prison administrators and other correctional officials. With that being said, this paper will discuss the differences between harmonizing those constitutional rights of prisoners and the functions of the facility. It will also explain the rights that prisoners are required to have, and how these rights are balanced within other aspects of the correctional institution.

For over a century, a huge number of studies have confirmed two basic yet powerful truths about the relationship amongst immigration and crime. Immigrants are less inclined to perform serious violations or be in a correctional facility than the native-born, and high rates of immigration are related to lower rates of violent or serious crimes and property crime. This remains constant for both legal immigrants and the unauthorized, paying little mind to their country of origin or level of education. In other words, almost all immigrants are not "offenders or criminals" by any generally acknowledged meaning of the term. For this reason, harsh or many of those immigration policies are not effective in battling

Some people liken immigrants to being the root cause of crime and danger in most cities. This also leads into the belief that cities that have a large population of immigrants are more crime-ridden than cities with little to no immigrants. Rather, cities that have a large immigration population do not have much crime. The city of El Paso, Texas has many immigrants, but notably only eighteen homicides occurred out of 736,000 people in the previous year while in Baltimore, a city with only 637,000 inhabitants, there were 234 murders (Balko 43). Overall newcomers to a country do not necessarily increase murder rates. However, this relative peacefulness of immigrants does not appear consistently across the country. Within the city of Los Angeles, undocumented immigrants account for more than 90% of homicide charges and 65% of felony charges (Kouri 40). These statistics show that immigrants greatly contribute to crime. They cause harm to citizens while showing disrespect to the laws of the country. By accepting more immigrants, a larger number of criminals threaten the safety and security of America. As an increasing number of immigrants move into the country, the risk of lives being lost increases. This is also seen in other parts of the world such as the Calais jungle, where refugees attack truck drivers with makeshift weapons, power tools, and projectiles in order to stowaway to

Chris Cleave has witnessed first-hand the effects of immigration and detention centers. Cleave worked one summer at the Campsfield House Kidlington in England (“Chris”). There he learned of the authentic horrors of detention centers and the hell that immigrants detained were put through. Cleave heard the story of Manuel Bravo. Manuel Bravo hung

Since 2003, many Chinese citizens have been detained in extralegal detention facilities throughout the country known as “black jails.” Detainees within these jails, which are created for the purpose of detaining petitioners who seek rectification for problems at local and provincial levels of government, are subjected to a multitude of physical and psychological abuses. This paper analyzes the conditions that caused these detention facilities to appear, assesses the abuses and rights violations perpetuated by these jails, and offers several potential steps that American policymakers can take to address this issue.Introduction

However, recent statistics show Canada’s recent immigrants are better educated, on average, than native-born Canadians (Ceobanu, 2011). Large portions of the people tend to consider immigrants as a large contributor to todays share of crime. While the impact of immigration on crime governs the political debate in most of harboring countries, there is however, very little evidence to support this evidence. Its impact on crime is left unexplored due to the fact that most researchers focus on the impact of immigrants on labor markets (Almeida, Johnson, McNamara & Gupta, 2011). The National Identity however, conducted a survey in 1995 and 2003 by the International Social Survey Programme displaying that people tend to worry that “immigrants increase crime rates” rather than “immigrants take jobs away from natives”(Almeida, Johnson, McNamara & Gupta, 2011). This report hopes to seek the issues set behind immigration and crime. However, there it very little data to convey all views of both sides of the debate. This essay will examine recent sociological studies to attempt to bridge the gap as to why immigrants are seen to be involved in criminal activity. This essay will examine recent sociological studies in order to determine rise in immigrations and a rise in crime rates are positively correlated based on sociological research. To further understand if

Austin, J., Irwin, J. (2001). “It's About Time: America's Imprisonment Binge.” Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co