Immigrant Detention Paper

Asylum seekers who are held in mandatory and indefinite detention for prolonged periods of time

The return and removal of illegal immigrants from the United States is one of the most widely discussed topics. Since 2007the United States Customs and Border Protection (ICE) has returned or removed over 1.2 million illegal immigrants from the United States. ICE has expanded its Criminal Alien Program to included incarcerated criminal illegal aliens.  In 2007, ICE identified 164,296 convicted criminals who were incarcerated in Federal, state and local penitentiaries (These are people who came into the United States illegally and committed a crime.)

With the exponential increases in government expenditure on immigration enforcement since 2001, private industry accurately views immigration detention as a growth industry, and corporations have therefore devoted their resources to lobbying for those policies and programs that will increase their opportunities to do business with the federal government (DWN.org). Speculations that private prison corporations are more concerned with generating profit rather than the safety and security of detainees have emerged. Human rights violations have become more apparent through raids, deportations, and detentions against immigrants have been rampant with rationalization made in the name of homeland security since 9/11. The potential profitability of ownership and operation of detention centers are not the only means for generating profits, private industries operating within federal, state, and local facilities stand to generate substantial profit from subsidiary industries as well. Under the guise of protection of the general public and homeland security, these private prison systems create an image of being the solution to the “immigration problem,” when in reality most are only concerned

In these detention centers, immigrants are often denied medical care, even if they are very ill, and served poor quality food and drinks. They are treated like criminals, yet have not been charged with criminal offenses (Werner). Since 2003, ninety people have died in immigration custody. Many immigrants in the detention centers are also often neglected lawyers. Oftentimes, people are waiting six months for a twenty-minute asylum interview (Hendricks). As a result of rights not being withheld, immigrants are getting unfair treatment.

Deportation has been around for quite some time, but has only now become a controversial topic due to the high incarceration and deportation rate in the last decade. According to Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, sociology professor at UC Merced, and author of the book Deported Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor, and Global Capitalism, Obama and his administration deport more than 1000 immigrants a day. In the year 2012 the Obama administration established, “an all-time record high of more than 400,000 deportees” (Golash-Boza). What is more surprising is the fact that in 2012 more individuals were deported then the sum of all the individuals deported before the year 1997 (Golash-Boza). Mass migration of illegal immigrants began with the end of Keynesianism and the beginning of the neoliberalism. The ramifications of Neoliberalism has not only affected the us economy, but U.S. laws that directly influences the well-being of illegal immigrants.

Just as the various other bureaucratic agencies within the United States government serve specific purposes, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, does as well. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whose headquarters is in Washington, D.C., was formed in 2003, the result of a merger between the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs Service. ICE has many sub-departments dedicated to immigration control, smuggling and trafficking investigation, and terrorism

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.

Through interviewing my roommate Linda Wang, I have gotten the opportunity of hearing a first-hand account of what it is like being a young immigrant living in the United States. At the age of eight, Linda, along with her father, mother, and aunt, emigrated to America. Linda’s family currently resides in Bayside, Queens and she is a student-athlete on the St. John’s women’s golf team. Linda was kind enough to share her immigration story with me so that I may use it as a manifestation of what life as an immigrant, and the immigration process itself, entails.

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.

The United States is known as “the land of opportunities and hope” but it does not always offer what it portrays. Undocumented immigrants who come to the U.S. in search of “the American dream” have faced many injustices in this country, a country which claims to be free and fair. Undocumented immigrants are everywhere; however, not all immigrants are bad or trying to hurt others. In the United States, especially in California, Mexicans are the targeted group when it comes to politics and other important government issues. Mexicans are seen as invaders who are constantly killing and raping, but in reality this is not true. There are some Mexicans who kill and rape, yet there are also Mexicans who come to the U.S. to work and provide for their family.

A 2014 U.S. National Research Council reports discovered that in 2012, around one-fourth of the world's whole detained populace was housed in the United States. On a normal, 1 in every 100 Americans are in detainment facilities (Freudenberg, Daniels, Crum, Perkins, & Richie, 2005). One correctional facility practice has come under contemplation in recent years because of the separation of prisoners into special management for the purposes of severe punishment. It is commonly known as solitary confinement, segregation, isolation, and special management. This practice frequently involves sending prisoners in small, confined (precisely a box) for months, or even years. Long-haul detainment as an option apparently is more sympathetic sentence for detainees who have carried out terrible wrongdoings, and may not be considerably more caring than capital punishment. Turns out that keeping prisoners imprisoned in isolation for long-haul sentences can have genuinely harmful impacts on prisoners.

In these centers people are treated unfairly in a variety of ways. Congress has set a quota of at least 34,000 people having to be detained everyday and as a result, one of the very first cruelties at this stage of detention is being treated as cattle by letting privately owned prisons make profit off of how many people are in their facilities. The U.S government promotes making money off of undocumented immigrants by setting quotas that are incentivized because once the quotas are met, prisons receive money (Detention Watch Network, and Center for Constitutional Rights). Thus, Congress has put a price tag on the bodies of immigrants, which is very dehumanizing because no human should have monetary value. In addition to being treated as cattle, they are not given proper medical care, not given the right to a trial, they are given very little inedible food, they sometimes don’t have the chance to get fresh air, their lack of ability to speak english is taken advantage of in the way that they don’t tell them what the things they sign mean, they don’t have little to no officials who can translate, and on top of that they are confined in cells like the criminals they are not (Southern Poverty Law Center and Detention Watch Network). Undocumented immigrants can be in these centers for weeks

The United States of America experienced the greatest, and arguably the most significant, restructure of both governmental and legal proportions in its contemporary history. Following the suddenness of the attacks, the United States was desperate to ensure that an onslaught of a similar stature was subdued. Henceforth, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 was established, bringing into existence the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), a department specifically concerned with internal issues faced by the USA. Primarily made as a direct response to the 9/11 attacks, the role of the DHS is to protect the United States of America and its given states and territories from danger; specifically, terrorist attacks, man-made accidents, and natural disasters; this is commonly seen in airports in the form of Customs and Border Control which are two functions of the DHS, following its subsequent take over of the IHS (Immigration and Naturalisation Services) in 2003. In the same movement for security, the *USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 was legislated in an attempt to “detect and prosecute terrorism and other crimes”

These measures were taken to ensure public safety but are now posing a problem for our correctional facilities. Overcrowding and budgets are among the problems brought about by these measures. Both the state and federal correctional population throughout the United States have steadily seen significant increases in their population, every year for the past decades. Based on the census found on the Bureau of Justice website, the data collected between June 30th 2000 to December 30th 2005 showed that prisoners held in custody between federal and state prisons increased by 10%. (“Bureau of Justice Statistics”, p.1 -2)

Since the attacks on September 11th, 2001, intelligence activities has been one of the most controversial issues facing this country with one of the most controversial being the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Created in November of 2002 and concepted just two weeks after the attacks, the DHS focuses in five goals; prevent terrorism and enhance security, secure and manage the borders, enforce and administer immigration laws, safeguard and secure cyberspace,