Immigration Detention: They do what now?

1. The United Kingdom signed a treaty allowing them to send any asylum seeker that entered from a “safe third country” to Rwanda while they were waiting to have their claim processed. (Note: This was a Tory plan, and Labour canceled it before it could be put into action and asked for some of the money back. Rwanda said that sounded like a them problem.)
2. Mexico is very dangerous for migrants, as are many countries along traditional immigration routes.
3. It can vary depending on each country’s rules, but typically asylum seekers are those that have shown up at a port of entry to ask for refuge. Refugees, however, tend to apply for and receive immigration permission from outside the host country, most typically starting the process with the UN. To make it more confusing, if you are an asylum seeker in the US and your case is approved, you gain refugee immigration status.
4. Absolutely not lol.

Now before we go further, I do need to say the following: I used Mexico and the UK not to excuse the United States, but rather to show that many of the ideas we are seeing implemented in the United States were born abroad (ironically, I suppose) and while countries have no issues pointing out bad behavior by others, they tend to stop there. So if you are not an American, and are upset by the escalation here, I would suggest looking at your own country as well.

As you can see, immigration policy has been bad for a long time in many different places. There’s lots of outrages, and fortunately, those outrages are getting press because of how bad things have gotten. But the very sad fact of the matter is many of the things you hear about have been going on for years, if not decades. Does that mean you should give up? Absolutely not. If we’re all this outraged, and we’re paying attention, that’s the perfect time to try and change the whole system! However, it will probably help you to know what is “normal”, what isn’t, and some other basic facts around the immigration system. 

My goal is to pull together a few basic explainers to help you figure out what you need to know to fight and advocate effectively. Some will be useful to non-American audiences, some will be specific to us. Some posts may just be a collection of “here’s other people that already covered it”, others will be me answering questions, still others will be my notes for the book I’m supposed to be updating.

And so that brings us to the topic of the day: immigrant detentions and alternatives.

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Types of Detentions

There’s a few type of immigration detentions:

 CBP detention-  Customs and Border Protect (CBP) detention centers are meant for those caught crossing the border or entering into the US without permission and are governed by the National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search (TEDS).

These are short term holding facilities, with the regulations stating that … “Detainees should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours in CBP hold rooms or holding facilies. Every effort must be made to hold detainees for the least amount of time required for their processing, transfer, release, or repatriaon as appropriate and as operationally feasible” (CBP 2015, 14).

However, as noted by the National Immigration Forum, “… observers have frequently reported subpar conditions in CBP facilities, ranging from uncomfortable temperatures to inadequate medical care, food, water, and sanitation to holding children in CBP detention for more than 72 hours. These problems have particularly manifested during past influxes, when CBP facilities have faced overcrowding.” (National Immigration Forum )

ORR Custody • The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is in charged with custody of unaccompanied children taken in by CBP. In general, these children be transferred within 72 hours. Read more about this here.

Criminal detention- This is basically just if you’ve been arrested for a crime and are in the regular judicial system.

ICE Detention ICE is the agency in charge of interior immigration enforcement. According to ICE’s website:

Detention is non-punitive. Once an alien is transferred to ICE custody, the agency makes a custody determination. ICE uses its limited detention resources to detain aliens to secure their presence for immigration proceedings or removal from the United States — as well as those that are subject to mandatory detention, as outlined by the Immigration and Nationality Act, or those that ICE determines are a public safety or flight risk during the custody determination process.

When an alien is not subject to mandatory detention or is not deemed to be a public safety or flight risk, ICE exercises its discretion in making custody determinations to release aliens with conditions. These custody decisions are made on a case-by-case basis and after considering the totality of circumstances — primarily considering risk of flight, national security threat and risk to public safety.

ICE also takes other factors into consideration — including when an alien has a serious medical condition, is the primary caregiver of minor children, or other humanitarian considerations.

You can find information about ICE detention stats and information about different types of detention centers at the above link. There is individual and family detentions, some centers are run by the government, some by contract, and you can get more details here.

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Alternatives to Detention

If you argue against detainment centers, you are probably going to be asked at some point: well, what, do we just let people in our country illegally wander around while their cases are being processed? Or what about the “catch and release policies”?

The answer to the second is there isn’t such a thing as catch and release.

The answer to the first is yes.

Seriously. It’s been the norm for years, the compliance rate is super high, and it’s a money saver.

The National Immigration Forum notes that “[t]here is no official government policy entitled “catch and release,” but the term has been used pejoratively to refer to a number of different immigration policies, many of which are mandated by law. Such policies include the release of unauthorized migrants while they wait for the resolution of their cases pending in the immigration court system, limits on the time in which children may be held in detention, restrictions on the immediate return of Central American UACs, and legal precedents barring indefinite detention of unauthorized migrants whose home countries will not accept them. Critics assert that so-called catch and release policies encourage unlawful immigration. Migrants are still required to check in with immigration authorities and attend hearings in immigration court.”

Turning back to “letting them wander around”, well, we used to do it all the time, it’s completely legal, most people turn up for hearings, and it’s cheap.

On it being legal:

ICE detains noncitizens arrested from the interior of the country and those transferred from the border. Twenty-years ago, the average daily population of detained immigrants was approximately 7,000. During the first Trump Administration, it reached a height of 50,000 average daily population…. While ICE has the authority to allow most noncitizens to continue with their removal cases on the outside of custody, it often defaults to detention based on alleged “flight risk or threat to public safety.” The vagueness of these concepts frequently works against the liberty interests of noncitizens and there is generally a lack of uniformity when it comes to these discretionary releases. Only a certain portion of the overall noncitizen population must be detained under “mandatory detention” laws and even those individuals may be released based on certain exceptions. — American Immigration Lawyers Association

On costs:

These programs have a low average cost of $4.33 per day compared to $139.07 for adult detention and $319.37 for family detention. As of December 9, 2019, ICE reported a total of 93,094 people enrolled in some alternative to detention program. – American Immigration Council

And on it’s success:

ICE’s current ATD program and several community supported pilot programs have shown high rates of compliance with immigration check-ins, hearings and – if ordered – removal. Over 95% of those on “full-service” ATDs (which include case management) are found to appear for their final hearings. – Real Alternatives to Detention

And this isn’t just true in the US; it’s true around the world:

Global comparative research, looking at 250 examples of alternatives to detention in 60 countries, found that such alternatives achieve very high compliance rates of between 70 and 99%, and higher levels of case resolution and voluntary return, at a fraction (less than 20%) of the cost of detention. ADT Network

Other points that might be raised is we don’t know who they are (we 100% do) or that they are criminals (all immigrants commit crime at lower rates than the native born). And if they are worried about these immigrants getting benefits, well, they probably shouldn’t be (although some can’t work while their cases are pending, soooo….).

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This feels like an odd point to end this post; I feel like I’ve barely covered anything. But now, at least you know about detentions, that there are alternatives, and next time, we’ll get into how one actually ends up in ICE detention, what’s the same as previous admins, and what’s changed.

If you don’t want to wait for me to get around to it, here’s some resources that I will be pulling from: how deportations worked, including expedited removals, and how this has changed under Trump. Here’s a Congressional Research primer on immigration arrests. Then if you want more general info, here’s a primer on Immigration as a whole plus Trump’s actions on immigration- part 1 and part 2.

If you want to track detentions yourself, you can see how many people are detained here. Note, this data does come with caveats, but those are the fault of the government, not TRAC. It also sometimes disappears.

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