IMMIGRATION MATTERS -- Fortress America Is Not the Solution

New America Media, Commentary, Andrea Black, Posted: Mar 24, 2006

Editor's Note: Virtually unnoticed in the immigration debate is the proposed expansion of the current immigrant detention system that is already rife with abuse, writes New America Media contributor Andrea Black, coordinator for the Detention Watch Network, a national coalition working to reform the U.S. immigration detention system. She was the executive director of the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project in Arizona.

WASHINGTON, D.C.--As a lawyer who worked for eight years with thousands of immigrants detained in the Arizona desert, I have seen the devastating, and ultimately ineffective, results of our repeatedly enhanced enforcement-only immigration laws.

The Arizona facilities are part of a network of over 200 detention centers located in communities across the country for detainees going through deportation proceedings. These facilities are largely hidden from public view. In the name of national security, the U.S. government pays billions to house a ballooning population of immigrants.

Next week, the Senate is likely to pass legislation creating monumental changes in immigration policy. This new legislation would go a huge step further and turn what has been a nightmare for some into a gulag for many. Among these changes, illegal presence would be deemed a felony, and so would acts of helping undocumented immigrants.

Legal Permanent Residents could be deported for increasingly smaller criminal offenses. Local and state police would be forced to become immigration agents -- a public policy disaster that would deter people from reporting crimes they suffer or witness. The government would be allowed to detain immigrants indefinitely, and the federal courts' authority to review immigration matters would be gutted, further weakening the constitutional checks on Executive Branch decisions.

In anticipation of stricter enforcement, the proposed law would greatly expand the detention network, a costly and overcrowded system already rife with abuse. One proposal calls for using closed military bases, creating armed camps throughout the country. The draconian proposals are based on myths that cloud the immigration debate.

Myth: Only "illegals" and "serious" criminals, mainly from Mexico and Central America, are detained and deported from the United States.

Reality: The picture is much more complex. Every year, I worked with immigrants from over 64 countries. Many of my clients were lawful permanent residents facing mandatory deportation and permanent exile from their families for minor crimes. I had a client who faced deportation for stealing two tacos. Another had shoplifted diapers for his children. Many were middle-aged and had lived in the United States since they were children. They had an extensive network of U.S.-citizen and permanent-resident relatives.

I regularly worked with asylum-seekers and survivors of horrific abuse. They had fled for their lives, only to be detained for months, some even years, before being released. (My longest-term client was in detention for five years before being ultimately granted relief. The day he was finally released he received a standing ovation from detainees and jail personnel.) Many survivors experience severe re-traumatization as a result of prolonged detention.

Practically every day our office received desperate phone calls from U.S.-citizen wives whose husbands, the sole breadwinners, were in detention.

They and their children faced eviction from their homes because they could not keep up mortgage payments. They were forced to go on welfare to survive, and their children's school performance suffered. Women sat quietly weeping in court, not knowing if their children were safe because they had been swept off to detention during a work raid without being allowed to make a phone call to arrange pick-up for their kids in day care. Most of these individuals had strongly defensible cases, but the burden of detention was so hard on their families that they opted for deportation rather than stay and fight.

Every month we encountered at least two to three U.S. citizens who were caught in the web of detention because of the complexities of our citizenship laws.

They languished for months at taxpayer expense while the government sorted out its files.

Myth: Individuals are held in administrative detention while going through a straightforward hearing process to determine their right to remain in the United States.

Reality: Immigrants and asylum-seekers are held in prison settings surrounded by barbed wire and escorted to their immigration hearings behind locked prison doors. Those detained include men, women, children, the mentally ill and people suffering from serious illnesses. Many were spirited far away from families and communities that could provide support and shelter during the process. All are held at a high cost to U.S. taxpayers, while equally effective, more humane and less costly alternatives are available.

Immigration law is similar in complexity to the IRS tax code. Under this Byzantine law, people could face permanent exile from their families and, in some cases, possible persecution and even death. Roughly 90 percent go before a judge without the help of an attorney since there is no right to government-appointed counsel. In these isolated settings it is difficult, even impossible, to get access to phones, mail or legal materials for self-representation. Many cases stretch on for years as they make their way through a labyrinth of appeals.

There are no binding uniform detention standards to ensure humane treatment.

Detainees are often subjected to arbitrary punishment, including strip searches, shackling, solitary confinement, neglect of basic medical and hygienic needs and denial of outdoor recreation. Verbal, physical and even sexual abuse are regularly reported. Some detention facilities have no outdoor spaces and offer only "fresh air panels" on windows as the sole source of light and ventilation while detainees languish for months or even years.

Myth: We need these tougher measures to maintain our national security.

Reality: The majority of our current laws and those under consideration by Congress will affect mainly long-term permanent residents and undocumented immigrants without any ties to criminals or terrorism. The new laws will further drive undocumented immigrants into the shadows. Thousands of long-term permanent residents will be separated from their families because the law will close any chance for cases to be judged on the basis of individual circumstances. We need smart national security measures that target criminal behavior, rather than waste national resources on widely sweeping laws that indiscriminately entangle people in their web.

What is the current cost of indiscriminate enforcement? The Department of Homeland Security spends an average of $65-$80 a day to detain one person, although in some facilities the costs have been as high as $225 a day.

From 1994 to 2002, the ICE detention and removal budget soared from $239 million to $1.1 billion. As members of Congress have recognized, the detention and deportation of the millions of undocumented people in the United States would cost an estimated $206 to $230 billion, assuming that several million come forward voluntarily.

This is not our only choice. There are alternatives for asylum-seekers and immigrants with community ties and an incentive to appear to resolve their cases. Supervised release with legal and social service support have proved more humane as well as secure and cost-effective.

For more than 20 years, our government has pursued an unworkable path of controlling immigration by criminalizing immigrants. Now it is considering more of the same in an effort to reduce illegal presence and prevent terrorism. We have poured billions into harsher penalties, more deportations, more checkpoints, increased technology and border patrol officers and more detention facilities -- all without reducing the level of undocumented immigration or making our borders safer.

Meanwhile, the heartache of families -- U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents and undocumented alike) - continues, and our communities increasingly become locked-down fortresses that aren't any safer.

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