It’s pointless to heedlessly lock up immigrants
Ihave vivid memories of the notorious T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former medium security prison in Taylor, Texas, run by CoreCivic, one of the nation’s largest for-profit prison companies. More than a decade ago, families were housed in cells and subjected to a strict prison regime. Even infants were dressed in prison garb.
Children at Hutto invented games in which they played border patrol agent and immigrant, arresting and freeing each other. One mother grabbed my legs tightly as she fell to the floor sobbing and begged me to get her family out.
I never imagined that in 2014, U.S. immigration policy would return to the misguided practice of detaining families, much less that this year we would see the horror of parents and children forcibly separated. Last week at the Karnes Detention Center, located just south of San Antonio, I met with reunited families, where crying fathers and young sons talked about fleeing violence in their
home countries and the trauma of being separated at the U.S. border. One father held tight to his son the entire time; another told me the wellbehaved son he knew before they were separated now was acting out and fighting with other children.
This time around, at least, the images of children and parents in cages has sparked outrage in the American public.
ICE has a history of mismanagement and lack of transparency and public accountability. Chaos has for years been the standard in the U.S. immigrant detention system, where the daily average number of incarcerated immigrants has been growing rapidly and now stands at more than 40,000 people held in a sprawling array of mostly for-profit private facilities located primarily in remote rural areas.
In this current crisis, ICE failed to meet a court-imposed deadline to reunite families, it lost or destroyed records documenting relationships among separated families, and deported more than 400 parents, many of whom may never be reunited with their children.
Although immigration violations are civil fall under civil law, immigrants are treated as criminals but with few due process protections. They are not entitled to court-appointed lawyers, making navigating the immigration system nearly impossible for the vast majority who are unable to secure counsel. Separated parents have been moved from one detention center to another for administrative convenience. There are too few Spanish language interpreters, and speakers of indigenous languages are especially helpless as they are often unable to understand why their children were taken. Attorneys cannot call clients directly, but must leave messages that may or may not be delivered. Waiting times at detention centers can as long as three hours, and attorneys must share the few available visitation rooms.
Abhorrent conditions, sexual abuse, inadequate food, lack of medical care and deaths in detention have been repeatedly documented over the years. Although nothing in the detention system changes, the response of the current administration has been to push for expanded, lengthier detention for immigrants, including parents and children.
Parents should not, as they currently are made to, have to choose between deportation without their children or prolonged detention with them. Under a civil system, detention should be the last alternative, not the first. Immigration courts should assess flight risk and public safety before depriving any person of her liberty. Absent any exceptional circumstances, immigrants should be released to their families or into the community, which is cheaper and more effective than over-use of detention.
Another solution is to adequately fund nonprofit organizations that provide legal representation to immigrants. One recent study, Detaining Families: a Study of Asylum Adjudication in Family Detention, showed that 96 percent of families with lawyers show up for scheduled hearings. Further, represented immigrants have a better chance of success in their cases than those forced to navigate the complexities of immigration law on their own.
Having caught a glimpse of the inhumanity of the immigrant detention system, the American public should now take a fresh look at over-incarceration and support communitybased options to help adults, parents and children to pursue their cases. We can do better — much better. Hines is a retired clinical professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law.