Monday, December 31, 2012

Big Stories of 2012 - #4 - Conditions at Two Texas Detention Centers Highlighted In "Expose and Close" Campaign | Texas Prison Bid'ness

Big Stories of 2012 - #4 - Conditions at Two Texas Detention Centers Highlighted In "Expose and Close" Campaign | Texas Prison Bid'ness

Big Stories of 2012 - #4 - Conditions at Two Texas Detention Centers Highlighted In "Expose and Close" Campaign

To round out 2012, Texas Prison Bid'ness is highlighting the top private prison stories of the year, based on stories covered by our blog.  Our number four story are the two private immigrant detention centers - the Corrections Corporation of America's Houston Processing Center and Community Education Centers' Polk County Secure Adult Detention Center - highlighted as amongst the worst detention centers in the country by a national report issued by Detention Watch Network.  
TPB Big Story #4 - Conditions at Two Texas Detention Centers Highlighted In "Expose and Close" Campaign 
Texas immigration advocates (including Grassroots Leadership, a sponsor of this blog) havePolk protestPolk protest joined a national effort to "Expose and Close" some of the nation's worst immigrant detention facilities.  As part of that effort, two private detention centers in Texas - the Community Education Center's Polk County Detention Center and Corrections Corporation of America's Houston Processing Center - have come under fire for a range of human rights violations.
According to the reports, the Polk facility in particular had egregious conditions.  According to the groups' press release:
"At Polk, detained men eat, sleep, and use the bathroom all in one room. The cells are dreary, lack natural lighting, and do not offer privacy. Neither meaningful programming nor legal services exist at Polk. One man detained at Polk told members of Texans United for Families, “This isn’t a good place; I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”
In December, over a hundred protestors from a diverse coalition of Austin and Houston-based human rights group gathered to for a Human Rights Day vigil to call for the closure of the detention center and denounced profiteering from the detention of immigrants in the US.

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Saturday, December 22, 2012

Multi-American : ICE announces 'immigration hold' guidelines while hitting new deportation record | 89.3 KPCC

Multi-American : ICE announces 'immigration hold' guidelines while hitting new deportation record | 89.3 KPCC


How immigrants are redefining 'American' in Southern California

ICE announces 'immigration hold' guidelines while hitting new deportation record

Mercer 17321

John Moore/Getty Images

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), officer prepares an undocumented Salvadorian immigrant for a deportation flight bound for San Salvador.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is responding to state and local leaders' recent efforts to cut down on the number of immigrants held for deportation by issuing its own set of guidelines for what are known as "immigration detainers," released Friday.
But despite reports of a recent dropoff in deporation cases at the court level, the Obama adminstation has continued to deport record numbers of people, at least through fiscal year 2012. During that time, immigration authorities removed more than 409,000 people.
State or local law enforcement places immigration detainers, or holds, on individuals if that person is deemed deportable. The holds are standard practice in the enforcement of Secure Communities, a federal program that allows peace officers to share the fingerprints of people booked at local facilities with Homeland Security. If there is a match, the local agency is asked to hold the person for deportation by immigration officials.
The new ICE guidelines, outlined in a memo by agency director John Morton, call for limiting who is held and to note various qualifying offenses. But there are still broad categories of people who can be held for no other violation. One clause states that detainers can be issued for individuals simply if agents "have reason to believe the individual is an alien subject to removal from the United States." Convictions for illegal entry also count.
From the memo, detailed guidelines for "National Detainer Guidance:"
Consistent with ICE's civil enforcement priorities and absent extraordinary circumstances, ICE agents and officers should issue a detainer in the federal, state, local, or tribal criminal justice systems against an individual only where (1) they have reason to believe the individual is an alien subject to removal from the United States and (2) one or more of the following conditions apply:
• the individual has a prior felony conviction or has been charged with a felony offense;
• the individual has three or more prior misdemeanor convictions;2
• the individual has a prior misdemeanor conviction or has been charged with a misdemeanor offense if the misdemeanor conviction or pending charge involves -
- violence, threats, or assault;
-  sexual abuse or exploitation;
- driving under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance;
- unlawful flight from the scene of an accident;
- unlawful possession or use of a firearm or other deadly weapon;
- the distribution or trafficking of a controlled substance; or
- other significant threat to public safety;
• the individual has been convicted of illegal entry pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1325;
•the individual has illegally re-entered the country after a previous removal or return;
• the individual has an outstanding order of removal;
• the individual has been found by an immigration officer or an immigration judge to have knowingly committed immigration fraud; or
• the individual otherwise poses a significant risk to national security, border security, or public safety.
The ICE memo notes that the Homeland Security detainer form, I-247, will be revised to reflect the guidelines.
One frequent criticism of Secure Communities has been that too many people with either minor or no offense records are held for deporation, whereas the stated focus of the Obama administration has been to net serious criminals. 
The program, combined with other policies, has boosted deportations to record levels in recent years, and fiscal 2012 is no different:  ICE on Friday said that it removed 409,849 individuals between Oct. 1, 2011 and last Sept. 30; 55 percent were categorized as convicted criminals, although this includes misdemeanors. See a breakdown of removals here
Since Secure Communities rolled out in late 2008, opponents have pointed out problems including  confusion over whether the program was optional. As officials in various states began voicing concerns that it might alienate immigrant communities and potentially impede policing, some states attempted to bow out of the program, only to be told by ICE that they could not. In August of last year, ICE director John Morton announced that he was rescinding the federal-state contracts that agreed to Secure Communities, leaving states little choice but to participate.
Lawmakers in some states and cities have since attempted other ways to work around the program. Most recently, California Attorney General Kamala Harris issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies in the state with the legal opinion that they needn't comply with ICE orders to detain an individual for deportation. From her bulletin earlier this month:
Several local law enforcement agencies appear to treat immigration detainers, sometimes called “ICE holds,” as mandatory orders.  But immigration detainers are not compulsory.  Instead, they are merely requests enforceable at the discretion of the agency holding the individual arrestee.
Agencies in the state -among them the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department - have since revised policies to reflect Harris' direction on immigrant detainers.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Behind Razor Wire, a Voice — An Account of Visiting an Asylum Seeker in Detention

Behind Razor Wire, a Voice — An Account of Visiting an Asylum Seeker in Detention

Behind Razor Wire, a Voice — An Account of Visiting an Asylum Seeker in Detention

Today, I’d like to use this blog to lift up the insights of someone who’s experienced visiting migrants in detention. This account was written by Nicholas Kang, Program Fellow for LIRS’s Access to Justice unit. His post showcases not only the courage of those in detention, but also the incredible importance of the work of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition (TASSC), the Florence Project, and Casa Mariposa.
I arrived at the Florence Service Processing Center in Arizona along with 15 others — wives, children, and friends of people being held behind the walls. We were escorted by a series of different guards through a cage of chain-link and razor wire, then into a nearby concrete building. Finally, we entered a large sterile room furnished with 12 steel tables bolted to the floor, and spotted a man in a blue jumpsuit. He was nervously waiting to see who had made the 50+ mile trip from Phoenix, Tucson, or elsewhere to visit.
Because it was an impromptu visit, my friend Johannes from Catholic Charities San Antonio and I had to wait for everyone else to settle in. At that point, it was easy to identify Juan (name changed to protect his identity), the man we were scheduled to meet: He was the only one sitting alone.
During our time with Juan, an asylum-seeker, he shared his story. He mentioned how much he wished to be with his children. He shared how difficult it was to visit with his kids, and not to be able to explain the challenges he faces every day in detention. He showed us the rows of scars on his wrists and forearms from being tortured in Mexico. He talked about the struggle of seeing his children grow up while he remains locked up.
Our hour with Juan vanished before our eyes, and we were forced to go our separate ways. For Johannes and me, it was only back through the cage of chain-link and razor wire, the narrow hall, and then down the road to Tucson. For Juan, it was back to the same cell and building in which he had lived for the past seven months.
I left Florence SPC angry and frustrated with the challenges Juan is facing. Our conversation revealed the difficulties he’s dealing with in attempting to complete his asylum application. Juan speaks only Spanish, and the forms are only available in English. One would think that with over 75% of the estimated undocumented immigrant population in the United States coming from Spanish-speaking nations, our government would provide multilingual forms. As matters stand, the English forms fundamentally restrict the due processes of people who can’t access translators and/or legal counsel.
Another challenge facing Juan is staying connected to his wife and children. He enjoys speaking with them by phone, but the cost is prohibitive. He works within the facility, but being paid $1 a day for his labor doesn’t even begin to cover the outgoing calls overcharged by the facility. Furthermore, this $1 a day does little to help Juan save enough money to post bond or bail, even if given the opportunity to do so.
The reality of immigration detention seemed to run counter to our image of the country we have pride in. We live in a nation without an official national language, yet we suppress those who speak anything other than English. We live in the age of the Internet and telecommunications, yet we develop restrictions to limit communication between those in detention and those outside. We have abolished slavery, yet we allow private correctional facilities to pay detainees nickels and dimes for work within their centers. We have community-based alternatives to detention that uphold the rights of migrants, yet we elect to incarcerate them instead. It does not make sense.
At Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, the goal of our unit, Access to Justice, is to promote access to the justice system, immigrant benefits, and legal protection to immigrants and refugees. There are alternatives to detention that are cheaper, more effective, and (most importantly) more humane. It’s up to all of us to ensure that the least-restrictive measures are prioritized, and that incarceration becomes a last resort when dealing with migrants and refugees.
(Holding back tears, Juan said that his youngest son’s Christmas wish was for his father to come home. This holiday season, I ask you to reflect on those who are being detained and separated from their family because they simply asked us, our nation, for a helping hand.)
I thank the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC), Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition (TASSC), the Florence Project, and Casa Mariposa for organizing an incredible weekend of conversation and visitation, and for all the work they do on a daily basis. Their energy, inspiration, and commitment to their work is making a difference in immigration detention, and I look forward to working with them in the near future.








Related posts:

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

via @HumanRights1st: U.S. Should Take Action to Protect Human Rights of Migrants « Detention Watch Network: Monitoring & Challenging Immigration Detention, Immigration Enforcement & Deportation

via @HumanRights1st: U.S. Should Take Action to Protect Human Rights of Migrants « Detention Watch Network: Monitoring & Challenging Immigration Detention, Immigration Enforcement & Deportation

 

Preserving Human Rights & Restoring Justice

via @HumanRights1st: U.S. Should Take Action to Protect Human Rights of Migrants

December 18, 2012
human_rights_first_For Immediate Release: Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Contact: Brenda Bowser Soder, bowsersoderb@humanrightsfirst.org202-370-3323
Washington, DC - On International Migrants Day, Human Rights First calls on the United States and all states to protect the human rights of migrants and to reform policies and practices that leave migrants vulnerable to violence, arbitrary detention and a lack of access to mechanisms for protecting their human rights. 
Around the world, and here in the United States, asylum seekers, refugees and migrants are sometimes detained despite the existence of more cost-effective and rights-respecting alternatives, held in jails and jail-like facilities and denied prompt court review of their immigration detention. The United States has set a poor example for other states by detaining migrants in jail-like facilities and limiting access to asylum through interdiction policies and other barriers. Migrants and refugees can be particularly vulnerable in border regions, at sea, and during wars and emergencies. They are sometimes the targets of xenophobic violence and the risks they face are escalating with the rise in xenophobic rhetoric in many countries. Unaccompanied minors can face particular risks when in transit as well as once in the country of destination, and in some locations, migrants are frequently subjected to sexual and gender-based violence when crossing borders through irregular channels. Migrants who lack legal status also struggle to access recourse when subjected to xenophobic attacks or sexual and gender-based violence as they may be unlikely to report violent attacks to the authorities for fear of being detained and deported.
Over the next year, the United States will have some important opportunities to reform its domestic immigration policies and to shape international dialogues relating to migration and human rights. The United States should – both at home and abroad – lead the international community in establishing mechanisms to protect the human rights of vulnerable migrants. The United States should, among other steps:
  • Reform migration detention policies to consider alternatives before resorting to detention, provide prompt court review of detention, and end the use of jails and jail-like facilities with penal conditions;
  • Protect and urge other states to protect migrants from xenophobic and other violence, and support the capacity of the UN Refugee Agency, other agencies and international organizations to assist victims, advocate with states for better protection, and encourage states to provide access to justice for victims of violence;  and
  • Promote access to asylum and protection, inject safeguards into U.S. interdiction processes, and encourage other states to provide access to asylum and protection.
For more information about the steps that the United States should take to advance reforms relating to immigration detention, xenophobic violence and interdiction, read Human Rights First’s:

Friday, December 14, 2012

Banking on Detention: Demonstrators Call on Wells Fargo to Divest from Private Prisons - Uprising

Banking on Detention: Demonstrators Call on Wells Fargo to Divest from Private Prisons - Uprising

Friday Dec 14, 2012 12:10 pm

Banking on Detention: Demonstrators Call on Wells Fargo to Divest from Private Prisons

By Rebecca Burns

New York demonstrators call on Scopia to divest from private prisons.   (Photo courtesy of Andalusia K. Soloff)
After Ancelma’s husband was deported to Mexico, she found herself unable to close a bank account with Wells Fargo that was accruing overdraft fees. Though it has marketed itself as a bank of choice for the Latino community—accepting matricula cards that give undocumented immigrants access to banking services and even establishing “Wells Fargo Amigos” outreach teams—the bank refused to accept her husband’s authorization to close the account because it was written in Spanish.
The family soon learned this wasn’t the only way in which Wells Fargo is less “immigrant-friendly” than it first appears: The financial institution also invests heavily in the private prison industry that lobbies for and profits from harsher immigration enforcement and detention.
Ancelma’s story is one of several detailed in a series of reports urging Wells Fargo to break ties with private prison operators. In September, National People’s Action and the National Prison Divestment Campaign exposed that the bank was heavily invested in two major such companies with nearly $100 million of holdings in GEO Group and nearly $3 million in the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The groups launched a public pressure campaign, branding the bank “Jails Fargo” and holding demonstrations outside its branches.
In late October, they declared victory when Wells Fargo’s most recent SEC filings revealed that it had divested more than a third of its holdings in GEO Group.
Prison divestment organizers are encouraged by this move, but say it doesn’t yet go far enough. During a national day of action yesterday, activists in nine cities staged demonstrations to call for full divestment from the private prison industry. “Wells Fargo still provides a $700 million line of credit without which CCA could not build new prisons,” explains Peter Cervantes-Gautschi, executive director of Enlace, a national alliance of low-wage worker centers that coordinates the National Prison Divestment Campaign. “And beyond this, we’re asking all institutions, public and private, to cut ties with this industry—much as people of conscience divested from apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.”
The National Prison Divestment Campaign, launched in spring 2011, brings together labor and faith organizations with immigrant rights groups alarmed by the explosion of private detention centers. In 2005, private prison operators gained a major foothold in the field of immigrant detention with the start of Operation Streamline, a policy mandating criminal, as opposed to civil, prosecution of undocumented immigrants crossing the border. As the result of this shift, and the redefinition of acts like “illegal border crossing” as immigration felonies, Latinos now constitute the majority of those sentenced for federal crimes. Nearly half of immigrants convicted of such crimes are held in private facilities.
The private prison industry has been involved in lobbying heavily for both new immigrant detention centers and tougher enforcement policies that will help fill them. In 2010, In These Times reporter Beau Hodai uncovered CCA’s pivotal role in shaping SB 1070, Arizona’s anti-immigrant law. Thirty out of the 36 state legislators who co-sponsored the bill received campaign contributions from private prison companies. Though the Supreme Court struck down three out of the bill’s four provisions earlier this year, the “show me your papers” law that invites racial profiling by law enforcement remained intact, and has since taken effect in Arizona.
SB 1070 is far from the only instance where private prison companies have prevailed in securing such lucrative arrangements. During the past decade, the AP reported in August, the three major private prison companies have spent $45 million in lobbying and campaign contributions. This was money well-spent: Whereas ten years ago, private prison operators held two federal contracts worth about $760 million, the Federal Bureau of Prisons today pays these companies $5.1 billion through 13 different contracts.
The result is more than 23,000 immigrants detained for federal crimes, up from just over 3,000 a decade ago. Cervantes-Gautschi asserts that this drastic increase is clearly the result of profit-motivated policy shifts: “More than half of immigrants in the federal prison system are being held for things not even considered crimes six years ago,” he says.
Demonstrations held across the country yesterday targeted Wells Fargo, GEO headquarters, and the hedge fund Scopia, which according to Enlace is the largest investor in GEO Group among hedge funds. As New York demonstrators assembled outside Scopia’s offices, protesters carried life-sized black silhouettes labeled “missing” to symbolize the destruction of communities wrought by rising levels of detention.
“Each silhouette represents a missing member of our community,” explains Andalusia Soloff of the group Families for Freedom. “A person who, no matter the legal status, residency, or citizenship of the person has been removed and sent away, leaving their families and loved ones behind.”
1 comments  · 
Rebecca Burns, In These Times Assistant Editor, holds an M.A. from the University of Notre Dame's Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, where her research focused on global land and housing rights. A former editorial intern at the magazine, Burns also works as a research assistant for a project examining violence against humanitarian aid workers.

More by Rebecca Burns

Friday, December 7, 2012

Outrageous Conduct Verdict against Thomas Wierdsma, Sr. V.P. GEO Group, ...

Dorf on Law: Access to Counsel and the Political Geography of Immigration Detention

Dorf on Law: Access to Counsel and the Political Geography of Immigration Detention

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Access to Counsel and the Political Geography of Immigration Detention

Posted by Anil Kalhan

HRF Panel - NOLAAmong the more striking comments at the event convened last week in New Orleans by Human Rights First, Dialogues on Detention: Lessons from Criminal Justice Reform for Immigration Detention, were those by Louisiana State University Law School Professor Ken Mayeaux, who directs the school’s immigration clinic. In the day's final panel, on access to counsel, Mayeaux painted a grim picture concerning the ability of noncitizens detained within Louisiana – whose immigration detention beds comprise 6 percent of the total number of ICE detention beds in the country, but 90 percent of whose detainees have been transferred from out of state – to obtain legal representation, either for bond hearings or to defend against removal itself. He offered up the Oakdale Federal Detention Center for particular scorn. Back in the 1980s, he said, "someone had the brilliant idea to build a 900-bed detention facility in the middle of nowhere." Today, in practice, Mayeaux asserted, “there is no access to counsel at Oakdale.”
Even when individuals are not detained, the complexities of immigration law make the role of counsel for noncitizens in removal proceedings – who, unlike criminal defendants, have no right to government-appointed assistance of counsel – exceptionally important. For example, a 2011 study of cases initiated in New York – which was jointly conducted by the Vera Institute of Justice and the Immigrant Representation Study Group convened by Judge Robert Katzmann of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit – found that while 74 percent of non-detained individuals represented by counsel secured successful outcomes in their cases (defined as either relief from removal or termination of proceedings), that figure dropped to 13 percent for non-detained individuals who lacked legal representation. But as with the criminal justice system, in which individuals held in pretrial detention fare worse in their cases than individuals who are not detained, noncitizens in immigration detention fare considerably worse in their cases: only 18 percent of legally represented individuals in detention secured successful outcomes, while a scant 3 percent of unrepresented detainees were able to do so.
Detention Demand vs Capacity (Schriro Report - Immigration Detention Oct 2009)Moreover, the likelihood of obtaining legal representation in the first place is considerably lower for detained noncitizens – and lower still when ICE transfers those individuals long distances to remote detention facilities that are far from major urban centers, as the 2011 New York study found to occur with approximately 64 percent of individuals originally taken into custody in New York. According to Human Rights First, approximately 40 percent of ICE’s total detention bed space (which currently totals approximately 33,000 beds) is at least 60 miles away from an urban center – and in many cases even more remote. The consequences of rendition into this archipelago of facilities can be dramatic. A 2009 study by the National Immigrant Justice Center found that 80 percent of all detainees were held in facilities that were underserved by legal aid organizations. While non-detained individuals who remained in New York were represented by counsel in approximately 73 percent of all cases, only 21 percent of individuals who were transferred to these remote detention centers were legally represented in their proceedings. Those figures are broadly consistent with earlier data indicating that as few as 16 percent of detained individuals nationwide are represented by legal counsel in their proceedings. (Two reports by Human Rights Watch, one published in 2009 and one published in 2011, further document the massive scale of detainee transfers to remote detention facilities and the implications for access to counsel.)
Of course, immigration detention is not, strictly speaking, a “legal black hole” in the sense that Lord Steyn characterized Guantanamo: a place “beyond the rule of law, beyond the protection of any courts, and at the mercy” of government officials altogether. But for many noncitizens, their rendition to remote detention facilities where they lack any meaningful access to lawyers – and for that matter, where they also lack the protection of binding detention standards, or recourse to effective mechanisms of holding their jailers accountable to the non-enforceable standards that do exist – can operate as its functional equivalent. For these individuals, geography often becomes destiny.
* *
In his posthumously published 2011 book, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice, William Stuntz draws attention to the role played by geography in the evolution of the politics of crime in the United States:
The vice wars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries … invited voters in America’s small towns and countryside to weigh in on the character and consequences of crime outside of their own jurisdictions, chiefly in America’s cities. State and national politicians learned a crucial lesson: they could win votes in some places by attacking crime in others. [p.191]
Prison Map: The Geography of IncarcerationIn more recent years, the political geography of mass incarceration has contributed further to this underlying dynamic, as the incarceration of offenders in remote locations, far from their home communities, has given those remote communities tangible interests in maintaining or increasing those levels of imprisonment. While prison expansion has occurred in both urban and remote locations, it has had particularly significant consequences for smaller communities. In many instances, prison expansion has been pitched to these communities as offering significant economic benefits, even as the actual evidence concerning those supposed benefits has been more equivocal. Moreover, since the Census counts incarcerated offenders as “residents” of the jurisdictions in which the prisons are located, rather than their own home communities – even in situations in which those individuals are ineligible to vote – some remote communities have reaped political windfalls from the incarceration of these new “residents” in their communities when the boundaries of federal, state, and local political districts have been apportioned.
Thus, the “carceral bargain” (to draw upon Sharon Dolovich’s concept) by which the government excludes and maintains control over prisoners has an equivocal aspect. On the one hand, the bargain depends upon prisoners being largely invisible from the typical citizen’s day-to-day consciousness – so that, as Dolovich argues, “society as a whole . . . need not think about them again until they are released.” At the same time, however, that bargain is also reinforced, at least partially, by the ways in which prisoners’ local presence while incarcerated is tangibly felt and experienced in the communities where prisons are located.
Oakdale Federal Detention CenterThe political geography of immigration detention offers an interesting variant on this dynamic. Immigration detention does not provide the opportunity for so-called “prison-based gerrymandering” presented by criminal incarceration, but local communities often are lured by similar hopes that detention might offer economic benefits. As Immigration Judge Wayne Stogner noted during last week’s HRF event in New Orleans, “there is only one reason why the Oakdale facility was built in the middle of nowhere: money.” When the facility was built back in 1985, Oakdale (population 7,100 at the time, and population 7,780 as of 2010) had endured significant economic hardships due to plant closings that prompted the loss of almost 1,000 jobs. With an unemployment rate of almost 32 percent, the promise of over 300 jobs as a result of a detention facility with almost 1,000 beds was an inviting one – indeed, a town meeting on the project reportedly drew hundreds of supporters and no opponents. When the town ultimately was awarded the facility, the local newspaper proclaimed, in a three-inch, red-inked headline, “WE GOT IT!
For the federal government, recounted Stogner at the HRF event, Oakdale offered a location less costly than its competitors. But advocates suspected from day one that detaining individuals in such a remote location would interfere with individuals’ access to counsel.  The ACLU and Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (the predecessor to Human Rights First) even filed suit to block INS from opening the facility, as the Houston Chronicle reported at the time:
Now, with the center nearing completion on a 30-acre fenced enclosure hardly three miles from City Hall, Oakdale's rather offbeat crusade would seem a sure thing - except for some meddling New York lawyers. “The ACLU,” said Oakdale civic booster James Sandefur, accenting each initial of the American Civil Liberties Union the way a civil rights leader might say, KKK.
The ACLU has filed suit in Washington challenging the use of the Oakdale center to house aliens, arguing that the new prison is so far out in the sticks that immigrants would be automatically precluded from justice.
“The problem is that the city of Oakdale, in a rural area of Louisiana, only has five lawyers,” said Arthur Helton, director of the political asylum project of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, which has joined the ACLU in the lawsuit.
Helton, careful to add that “while I'm sure that those five lawyers will do what they can,” said they would be too few to handle the hundreds of political asylum cases the detention center is likely to generate.
* * *
“There is a terrible tragedy in the offing," Helton said, arguing that if asylum cases are sent to Oakdale, the migrants will be processed and deported without a chance to adequately argue claims that they face political persecution back home.
Helton indicated suspicion that the INS may have picked rural Oakdale for exactly that reason: to avoid the free legal defense apparatus to aid aliens already in place in urban centers like Miami, San Francisco, New York and Houston. [link]
Helton was prescient, describing precisely what ultimately came to pass. (Indeed, above and beyond the lack of access to counsel that Helton predicted, mass transfers of detainees from the places where they were arrested to Oakdale and other facilities in Louisiana have often afforded the government the benefit of substantive legal standards that have been less favorable to the noncitizens’ claims for relief in removal proceedings, as Nancy Morawetz and Human Rights Watch have both documented.) But the ACLU and LCHR lawsuit was dismissed, and Oakdale became a foundational paradigm, of sorts, for what we might understand as an immigration detention variant of the “carceral bargain,” as state, local, and private actors have enthusiastically lined up in hopes of benefiting from the federal dollars that flow in their direction when they contract with ICE to detain noncitizens.
* *
The Obama administration’s detention reforms since 2009 have sought to temper some of these excesses, most notably by limiting the use of remote local jails and building greater detention capacity closer to the places where detainees live and are initially taken into custody. Through these adjustments, ICE hopes to limit the overall extent to which noncitizens are routinely transferred to locations far from their lawyers, families, and other community ties. These changes in ICE’s policies and practices could eventually contribute to greater access to counsel for many noncitizens in removal proceedings. However, as I have argued elsewhere, the immense and growing overall scale of immigration detention and enforcement makes the ultimate success of these initiatives deeply uncertain. Especially given the immense, unfulfilled need for access to quality legal representation for noncitizens – whether detained or not – transforming the political geography of immigration detention, along with its corresponding carceral bargain, remains a long-term challenge.
(Cross-posted at ImmigrationProf Blog.)

2 comments:


Michael C. Dorf said...
Very interesting and dispiriting. Here's a thought: In Al Maqaleh v. Gates, the DC Circuit, picking up on a suggestion by the majority in Boumediene v. Bush, says that if the government deliberately chose a detention site for the purpose of defeating habeas jurisdiction, that would count in favor of finding jurisdiction. The underlying legal questions are different, but I wonder whether one could make an argument that there is a general principle that says that the government cannot profit from its own wrong. Of course, here, as in Al Maqaleh, proving that the government chose the site for nefarious purposes would be challenging.
Anil Kalhan said...
For a period of time in the late 1990s, there actually was a very crude variant on what you suggest taking place. After the 1996 immigration laws were enacted, but before INS v. St. Cyr was decided in 2001, it was unclear which court had jurisdiction to review final removal orders, District Courts on habeas corpus or Courts of Appeals on petitions for review. During that period, several district judges in New York (I recall Judge Weinstein in Mojica v. Reno and Judge Chin in Yesil v. Reno but there may have been others) not only concluded that habeas jurisdiction over removal orders still existed, but they could exercise jurisdiction over removal orders that were issued in Louisiana and other far-flung places when the noncitizens were New York residents -- concluding that the New York long arm statute permitted them to exercise personal jurisdiction over the noncitizen's custodian, whether in Louisiana or in Washington DC at DOJ or INS headquarters, because they had "done business" in New York or something like that. There wasn't any conclusion that the government had rendered those noncitizens for nefarious purposes, but I always got the sense when reading those cases that the district judges were troubled by the practice of transferring individuals to these remote locations. All of that has now likely been superseded altogether by the combination of the Supreme Court's decision in Rumsfeld v. Padilla and the REAL ID Act's jurisdiction provisions, but I always found the political and social geography of habeas jurisdiction to be a particularly interesting dimension of the story of the litigation leading up to INS v. St. Cyr.
 

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