Immigration detention overhaul outlined

Pledging more oversight and accountability, the Obama administration will overhaul the U.S. immigration detention system and transform it from one reliant on a scattered network of local jails and private prisons to a centralized one designed specifically for civil detainees, officials announced Thursday.

The reforms are aimed at establishing greater control over a system that houses roughly 33,000 detainees a day and has been criticized for unsafe and inhumane conditions and for failing to provide health care that may have prevented many of the 90 deaths that have occurred since 2003.

“With these reforms, ICE will move away from our present, decentralized jail-oriented approach to a system that is wholly designed for and based on our civil detention needs,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John Morton told reporters. “The population that we detain is different than the traditional population that is detained in a prison or a jail setting.”

The federal immigration agency plans to review the use of 350 local jails, state prisons and private facilities. Within five years, officials said that detainees without criminal records likely would be held in fewer, less restrictive locations with more federal oversight.

Morton also announced that the agency will stop sending families to the controversial T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Texas and instead hold them in the agency’s only other family facility in Pennsylvania. The Texas facility, which will continue to house women, opened in 2006 and faced lawsuits over substandard living conditions. A settlement resulted in changes to how children were treated.

Immigrant rights advocates welcomed the changes but said there is still no clear policy on how detention facilities will be penalized when problems are found.

“We are encouraged that the administration is taking a hard look at what has traditionally been a dark spot in our immigration system,” said Karen Tumlin, a staff attorney at the Los Angeles-based National Immigration Law Center. “However, only time will tell if the reforms announced today amount to lasting change or simply creative repackaging of prior policies.”

Tumlin and others said the detention standards need to be made legally binding so immigrants are guaranteed access to counsel, family visits, legal materials and recreation time. Advocates also said that the government should use less punitive and less costly alternatives to detention, such as ankle bracelets or intensive supervision, for certain immigrants.

“We are very disappointed by the failure to discuss alternatives to detention in the proposal,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “The system now detains thousands of people who are not a danger and not a flight risk.” To increase oversight, the immigration agency will place federal monitors in 23 large detention facilities, which house more than 40 percent of the detainees. Morton also plans to hire experts in health care administration and detention management.

Morton said he did not plan to reduce the number of immigrants in detention or stop contracting with local governments and private corporations. He said that many detainees should be housed in less-restrictive settings rather than jails and prisons.