Secret Immigration Prisons

The above link posts to an editorial from today's NY Times. It discusses recent reporting on U.S. immigration prisons, and the attempt by our government to cover up the failings of this detention system.  You can also read the article that the editorial refers to by following this link.

Detainee Transfer Controversy

This article from the Houston Chronicle highlights an ongoing problem with immigrant detention: detainees are often moved repeatedly,  making it difficult (or impossible) for their families to keep track of them.  And their lawyers. 

If ICE plans to apprehend and detain immigrants, they need to have a reasonable plan in place to prevent this type of treatment.  How can these detainees have a legitimate chance at a fair hearing if they are frequently moved away from their attorneys? 

After Alejandro Sibaja was picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Houston 15 months ago, he was transferred six times and finally ended up in Haskell, north of Abilene.

By the time an immigration judge in Dallas granted Sibaja a green card last Wednesday, his wife, Iris Lopez-Sibaja said she had spent countless hours trying to track him through the nation's troubled immigration detention network, which faced criticism on Wednesday from government auditors and immigrant rights advocates for resulting in haphazard detainee transfers.

By the time an immigration judge in Dallas granted Sibaja a green card last Wednesday, his wife, Iris Lopez-Sibaja said she had spent countless hours trying to track him through the nation's troubled immigration detention network, which faced criticism on Wednesday from government auditors and immigrant rights advocates for resulting in haphazard detainee transfers.

“It was tough. It was harder on my kids, though,” Lopez-Sibaja said. “They were the ones always asking where their dad was.”

In separate reports released Wednesday, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security and the nonprofit organization Human Rights Watch criticized the controversial and increasingly common practice of transferring immigration detainees to detention centers far from their families and attorneys.

The OIG report found that ICE frequently fails to follow its own established procedures for detainee transfers, creating hardships for immigration detainees. The shuffling of immigration detainees from center to center, frequently because of a lack of bed space, has resulted in errors, delays and confusion for detainees, their attorneys, their relatives and the immigration court system, auditors found.

ICE officials issued a statement Wednesday saying the agency is in the process of overhauling the immigration detention system and plans to make reforms that will reduce the number of detainee transfers.

The Human Rights Watch report, which was based on data obtained from ICE through a Freedom of Information Act request, found that the agency made 1.4 million detainee transfers from 1999 through 2008, with the numbers growing significantly in the past few years.

Texas, which houses the largest share of the nation's immigration detainees, led the U.S. both in terms of sending and receiving immigrant detainees, accounting for more than 334,000 total transfers, the report found.

Alison Parker, deputy director for Human Rights Watch in the U.S., said the transfers often jeopardize detainees' court cases, separating them from their attorneys and frequently sending them to remote locations, such as rural Texas, where they have a slimmer chance of finding an immigration lawyer to represent them.

The court cases also may suffer because detainees are separated from the evidence or witnesses they may need for deportation or asylum hearings, Parker said.

Attorneys and immigrant advocates conceded that some transfers are inevitable and may be necessary to meet the specialized needs of detainees or to prepare immigrants for removal from the U.S. But some expressed concern about the growth of transfers based on a lack of bed space.

Timothy Hart, a Houston immigration attorney, said he recently had a client transferred from Houston to Oakdale, La. Several clients in the past year were sent to Atlanta, and one ended up in Pennsylvania, he said.

Houston immigration attorney Steven Villarreal said he had to stop representing Sibaja after he was transferred from Houston and ended up in Haskell.

“I told the family it would be too expensive,” Villarreal said, factoring in the plane tickets and hotel bills for hearings and the trial. “I had to refer him to another attorney up there.”

“It happens all the time,” Villarreal said of the transfers.

Sibaja, 33, was picked up in Houston on a bad check warrant in August 2008 and turned over to immigration officials, who found he had a conviction as a teenager for aggravated robbery. Sibaja, who came to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 12 or 13 years old, was put into removal proceedings.

He was transferred first from Houston to Conroe, then from Conroe to Mississippi just before Hurricane Ike hit. Then Sibaja was sent back to Houston before being transferred to Amarillo and then to Big Spring. Eventually, he ended up in Haskell, and his case was assigned to the immigration court in Dallas.

At first, Sibaja's wife made the seven-hour drive to visit him every other week. But with two kids and a house slipping into foreclosure in Houston, she said she eventually cut the visits back to once a month, and then to once every other month.

Lopez-Sibaja said her husband's detention was hardest on their son, who was 3 when his father was first detained, and their daughter, who celebrated her sixth and seventh birthdays without him.

On Nov. 25, an immigration judge granted Sibaja lawful permanent resident status based on his seven-year marriage to Lopez-Sibaja, a U.S. citizen, and the hardship his deportation would cause for his children. He was home in Houston in time for a Thanksgiving turkey dinner.

“It was a long, emotional and tough journey,” Lopez-Sibaja said. “Sometimes now when I look at him, I can't believe he's here.”

Dropping Immigration Charges against American Employers: This is why we have an immigration problem

This commentary is a based on a series of articles about the case Sholom Rubashkin, a manager of a kosher slaughterhouse who was charged with 72 counts of federal immigration violations, including harboring undocumented immigrants for profit, conspiracy to commit document fraud, and aiding and abetting document fraud.

The reasons for dismissing Mr. Rubashkin's immigration charges are this: he has been convicted for multiple counts of financial fraud, and his immigration convictions will not increase the time he serves in prison.

Hold on here--wasn't Rubashkin's Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville, Iowa the largest single-site raid in U.S. history? Didn't federal agents find 389 undocumented workers at the plant?

Where is FAIR? Where are the "Help Save" groups? Where is the indignant outrage of the Tea Party movement?

I think it's important to remember in instances like this--a perfect example of American hypocrisy--that while Mr. Rubashkin is not being held accountable for his role in the immigration violations, those who worked for him are either deported or sitting in immigrant detention centers. He won't have to pay for his substantial crimes facilitating undocumented immigration, but the immigrants themselves will.

The federal judge who was willing to overlook these crimes was sending a clear message to him and all the employers in the U.S.: if you break these laws, it's not going to be worth our time and money try to convict you. And why should he?

It's so much easier just to blame the immigrants.
in reference to: The Associated Press: Immigration charges dropped in slaughterhouse case (view on Google Sidewiki)

Immigrant Detention Revisited

Several years ago I blogged on the deplorable conditions that detained immigrants must suffer while they are awaiting their hearings. This article from the L.A. Times indicates that conditions for detained immigrants have not improved under the Obama administration.

The U.S. is holding more than 30,000 immigrants are in custody today, which is up from 6,200 in 1992. If we are going to incarcerate these people, we need to treat them humanely. If we cannot treat them humanely, they should be released.

Detention Centers will return to Federal employees to oversee treatment of inmates

The article from AP reports that the oversight of immigrant detainees will be returned to federal employees. Two years ago, DHS turned this function over to private industry.

The government has been criticized for its treatment of immigration detainees, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has made detention policies a top priority for her department. These changes are seen as a move to improve detainee treatment.

ICE "cracks down" on immigrant absconders

This is not the Avon Lady calling. ICE Agents approach a house in Fairfax in the pre-dawn hours to apprehend an immigrant absconder.

What is an immigrant absconder? --An immigrant who refuses to appear for their immigration hearing after they receive their deportation notice. According to today's Washington Post, the number of immigrant absconders has risen steadily since Sept. 11, 2001. The article also points out a few of the major flaws with our immigration system, the most prominent among them that our enforcement resources are vastly outnumbered by the total number of undocumented immigrants. The article notes that ICE will be adding additional fugitive apprehension teams to a total of 75 this year. With that number, they hope to increase apprehensions to 1000 per year. The current (and ever growing) number of absconders is currently estimated to be 636,000. so, if they apprehend 1000 per year, they should be able to clear up this problem in a mere 600 years, plus or minus half a century.

Does anyone else think it time to consider a more feasible solution to this problem?

When Children fall through the Cracks of our Immigration System

This article from today's Washington Post highlights a now common problem with increased apprehension of undocumented immigrants: sometimes their small children get left behind when their mothers (and sometimes fathers) are taken away.

Although the parents are undocumented, their children are often U.S. citizens who are abandoned and then incorporated into the child welfare system.

This situation is incomprehensible, and extremely sad.

Immigrant mistreatment

It appears that our government is not limiting its mistreatment only to "foreign combatants." This article from today's Washington Post reports on consistent mistreatment of undocumented people who have been apprehended by ICE.