An Ugly American Truth: Immigration Detention Facilities
In the remote corners of the United States lies a hideous, secret truth: immigration detention facilities. The U.S. controls over 200 of these for-profit jails and prisons all across the country, with Texas and California facilitating the highest concentrations of detentions.
Immigration detention facilities currently detain around 2.3 million immigrant people in total, at least 2 million of whom have no criminal record.
What exactly is immigration detention? Immigration detention is the practice of detaining people within a country who are suspected of illegal entry or violating their visas. Suspecting and accusing alone can get someone thrown into a detention center, who then becomes at high risk for deportation. Until the decision of a detainee’s deportation or residence is determined, that person may remain in these facilities for weeks, months, or years.
Inside America's $2bn immigrant detention industry - BBC News
Why are these facilities so ubiquitous and so intent on detaining millions of human beings? Like the U.S. incarceration structure, immigration detention is a money-making industry. Taxpayers pay $2 billion a year for immigration detention centers, and private companies like GEO Group gain enormous profit off of these detentions. In addition to private ownership, these facilities are also run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or by the local county/city.
All of these organizations benefit from detaining around 400,000 immigrants each year. Before 1996, authorities arrested and detained 8,500 people every day. However, once Bill Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) and the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), that number doubled to 16,000 detentions per day. Today, the detained population increases by 34,000 each day, due to congress mandating a lock-up quota, in addition to the growing xenophobia in our country. Despite prejudiced views that those being detained have criminal backgrounds, as mentioned above, most have no criminal record, and many detained immigrants are even legal permanent residents with local family and community ties, asylum-seekers, and human trafficking victims. Those detained in immigration detention facilities include men, women, and children.
In addition to the moral horror of imprisoning innocent children, immigration detention centers inflict physical and psychological abuse upon their detainees. Just as detentions resemble the profit that powerful owners gain through the U.S. incarceration, so too do detention facilities assimilate prison living and provisional conditions. This resemblance is not surprising, as many immigration detentions are housed in correctional facilities. Like prisons, immigration detention centers induce physically abusive environments, such as food restrictions, confiscating belongings, and transporting detainees in handcuffs and shackles. The prison-like atmosphere is also psychologically produced with the limited privacy of sleeping in a large room with other detainees, wearing uniform jumpsuits, being constantly guarded by officers, doing “counts”, and enduring the frustrations of slow and thoroughly inspected mail.
The inmates of these facilities are additionally dehumanized in hostile interactions with officers and in the loss of their identities, which become numbers: either their alien registration numbers or bed assignment numbers. The psychological abuse is exacerbated by not knowing how long one may be detained, while experiencing separation from society and from one’s family. Even for the families that manage to visit their detained loved one, there is not guarantee that the detainee will be able to see those family members, depending on the current circumstances within the facility.
One woman's struggle with her husband's detainment
These abuses have been a dark secret under Obama’s presidency. His administration responded to Central American immigration through the southern border with strong increase in family detention of immigrants, with the goal of discouraging more immigrants to cross the border. Now with Trump’s presidency, there is no sign of improvement in this broken system. In fact, since Trump became the president, there has been an increase by 150% in arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record.
The ugly existence of immigration detention facilities, and their abuses and detainments of children, is invisible in our news coverage and in academic settings. If American-born citizens (particularly white Americans) saw their loved ones and children detained for no reason but attempting to live a better life, there would be enormous public outcry. Our nation ignoring the pain of immigrants and their families in these situations demonstrates clearly our society’s profound dehumanization of these individuals. It is in the hands of American citizens to elect a president in 2020 who acknowledges and actively tries to improve our immigration and immigration detention center systems. In the meantime, the imprisonment and abuse of innocent people and children will never be justifiable.
References:
http://www.endisolation.org/resources/immigration-detention/
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/living-conditions-immigration-detention-centers.html
http://immigrationimpact.com/2017/01/20/president-obamas-legacy-immigration/
Images:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/aug/20/voters-say-solve-illegal-border-surge-sending-kids/
http://www.wradio.com.co/noticias/internacional/daniel-ramirez-medina-el-joven-mexicano-con-permiso-de-trabajo-en-eeuu-que-podria-convertirse-en-el-primer-quotdreamerquot-deportado-en-la-era-trump/20170215/nota/3385104.aspx
http://www.wradio.com.co/noticias/internacional/daniel-ramirez-medina-el-joven-mexicano-con-permiso-de-trabajo-en-eeuu-que-podria-convertirse-en-el-primer-quotdreamerquot-deportado-en-la-era-trump/20170215/nota/3385104.aspx