Immigration detention is no hospitality suite

On February 28, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) issued a statement criticizing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for releasing new national standards for immigration detention facilities. Entitled, “Deportation Manual: a Hospitality Guideline for Illegal Immigrants,” his statement makes imprisonment sound like a hotel visit. In so doing, Mr. Smith belittles the fact that each year 400,000 people — including thousands of asylum seekers, trafficking victims, families with children, the elderly and the sick — are jailed while they await civil immigration court proceedings in facilities that bear no resemblance even to the cheapest motel.

In 2008, Francisco Castaneda died of penile cancer after detention staff refused his numerous attempts to obtain diagnosis and treatment at a San Diego detention facility. Over the years cases like his and the substandard conditions in immigration detention have been well-documented by 60 Minutes, National Public Radio, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. In many facilities, detainees endure a myriad of abuses including a lack of adequate medical and mental health care that has led to numerous unnecessary deaths. As recently as October 2011, PBS Frontline revealed frightening accounts of sexual abuse by guards in the Willacy, Texas detention center.

Detention facilities should not jeopardize the health and safety of those in custody and that is why stricter standards are absolutely necessary. The national standards ICE announced last week are an important step. They are not a hospitality guide, but minimal standards to prevent mistreatment, injury, or death. Moreover, concerns remain that these new standards are insufficient to hold accountable the hundreds of facilities under ICE contract.

Indeed ICE has not gone far enough. It should recognize the applicability of the Prison Rape Elimination Act standards to immigration detention. When Congress enacted the law in 2003, it was intended to protect every individual in government custody. But ICE and its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, are resisting and leaving people at greater risk of rape and sexual assault in immigration detention. 

Rep. Smith rightly points out that immigration detention is expensive, costing $2 billion annually. But the solution is not to deprive detainees the basic care and treatment that U.S. law and common decency require as Smith proposes. The better solution that ICE uses but could implement more effectively is alternatives to detention, such as release on bond, intensive supervision and GPS-technology, that cost a dime for each dollar spent on jails. ICE should screen people more carefully for these more humane and cost effective methods.

Smith’s statement betrays a callousness that is unacceptable when we are talking about the detention of human beings.  Over the years he has proposed extreme measures, such as H.R. 1932, that grossly misuse detention and are clearly unconstitutional. To take away one’s liberty is a power that must be exercised carefully and with restraint. And when someone is jailed, our government bears the responsibility for caring properly for them.

Chen is the director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. The AILA is the national association of over 11,000 attorneys and law professors who practice and teach immigration law.

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