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According to the ACLU report on immigration detention centers, ‘despite the explosive growth in immigration detention centers in recent years, there are no regulations or enforceable standards regarding detention conditions'(IMMIGRATION DETENTION CONDITIONS). Poor centers led to many cases of poor treatment of immigrants in detention centers all over the U.S. The poor treatment reported ranges from lack of showers, sleeping places, water, food, and bathrooms, not treating illnesses, overcrowding, and much more. Since there was a lack of regulation and demand for detention centers, people started to create Private Immigration detention centers to make money. Immigration centers cut corners to keep costs low and high profit. That is a common motto for business, but this is not a typical business people are involved in their health and well-being but due to lack of regulations people can take advantage of this situation and make money.
The average population of immigrant detainees has increased more than fivefold in the past twenty years, according to The Landscape of Immigration Detention in the United States. The increase in illegal immigrants led to the need for more Immigration detention centers to be created, so more Private Immigration detention centers were built. Private Immigration detention centers are the leading party where most detainees complain about poor conditions. Private centers follow the motto of low costs high profit leading to substandard medical care, overcrowding, and lack of proper hygiene care like showers, tampons, diapers, and more. ‘Increased profits, for example, mean that the companies have additional resources that can be used to lobby, offer campaign contributions, fund analyses in support of detention, and take other steps to press for additional detention and profits, in a repetitive cycle’ (Immigration Detention, Inc. Journal on Migration and Human Security). The private institutions make detention centers like jails almost inhuman, which is not the purpose of detention centers. The actions taken by the private institutions show us we need to regulate the conditions of Immigration detention centers properly, so people don’t take advantage of the system.
The U.S. relies too much on Private Immigration detention centers; this can lead to complications. The Landscape of Immigration Detention in the United States source found that I.C.E. relied on over ‘630 sites scattered throughout the United States to detain individuals, more than 60% were private institutions. Private Immigration centers tend to be located in remote areas where it can be hard to find legal support. ‘About 48 percent, 26 percent, and 22 percent of detainees were confined at least once in a facility that was located more than 60 miles, 90 miles, and 120 miles away, respectively, from the nearest nonprofit immigration attorney who practiced removal defense.’ (Immigration Detention, Inc. Journal on Migration and Human Security). This shows that we need to have people monitoring Private Immigration centers to ensure the proper support is available if required by the detainees. Or the government can create laws so detention centers can be closer to urban areas that have that support ready. Another problem with Private Detention centers is that they tend to confine detainees in the facility longer than they are required. This is reported in Immigration Detention, Inc. Journal on Migration and Human Security ‘Among 261,020 adults who were released from detention during the fiscal year 2015, the average detention length (mean) was about 38 days. More than 87,000 of these adults were detained for longer than 30 days. This is a problem because they are profiting on the detainees staying longer than they should be this is because their real motive for keeping the detainees longer is to gain more profit. The detention centers should be as efficient as possible to minimize the spending of the U.S. The U.S. needs to find a way to either limit the power of Private Detention centers or create more Public detention centers to shift the dominance of Private centers.
The Immigration detention centers should properly take care of the immigrants even though they came to the U.S. illegally; they are still humans just like the people in the country legally. In the academic source Abusive Conditions for Women and Children in U.S. Immigration Holding Cells, they interviewed 110 women and children to describe what is happening inside detention centers. The women and children said they didn’t have access to showers, toothbrushes/ toothpaste, clean cloths, pads, or other stuff daily, and the detainees nicknamed the cell hieleras or freezers in English. This makes it unexcitable they have one job to maintain their detention centers so they can be livable. The fact that they don’t have such necessary products makes me question to what standard are the detention centers held responsible and why there are no inspectors that can shut down a center for not meeting the basic requirements of living. Some other things that were mentioned in the academic source were sleeping on the floor, using foil wrappers as blankets, and the fact that they named the detention centers as the winter or a freezer is unbelievable. I am especially scared for women who have babies who can easily catch a cold, which can be life-threatening. Speaking of health, the women and children reported that there was only one doctor with a lack of medicine for those who had colds. ‘We spent two days with no toothpaste, no clothes except the ones we were wearing, and no chance to wash,’ Melanie G., a Guatemalan woman, said of the holding cell in California where she was detained with her son, in a typical account’ ( Abusive Conditions for Women and Children in U.S. Immigration Holding Cells). They should know to prevent people from being sick the best thing to do is be clean this will reduce the need for doctors if detention centers can provide essential cleaning services like showers, soap, hand washing, and much more
The poor condition in the Detention centers can lead to death. ‘To date, 31 immigrants, including at least seven children, have died in immigration custody during the Trump administration’ (Cashing in on Cruelty). And there has been little done by I.C.E., who is in charge of things like this incident, which is sad because they should be holding people and organizations responsible for these deaths. Cashing in on Cruelty wrote about Mr. Samimi, an Iranian man who was a legal resident of the U.S. who lived in Thornton, Colorado for 40 years, who died after two weeks in an Immigrant detention center. Mr. Samimi was in Aurora Contract Detention Facility (ACDF), operated by the for-profit prison company The GEO Group, Inc. when his doctor unwarrantably cut him off his prescribed methanol. This ADCF center shows us how they only care for profits regardless of the loss of even humans ‘GEO posted a net income of $33.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, and is valued at over $2.3 billion today’ ( Cashing in on Cruelty). ADCF and GEO were involved in many other accidents as well if I were to report on each case, this research paper would be tens of pages to get to each one. Throughout this, the report mentions that there is one doctor for every 1000 detainees in the U.S., which is mind-blowing. This example was just one of many thousands of problems all over the U.S. in detention centers.
In conclusion, the situation of illegal immigrants is hard for a person who understands all laws regarding them, so I can’t give a clear answer on how to fix the situation. In Chapter 4 of American Government & Politics Today, the Civil Rights mentions how Illegal Immigrants contains no language that limits its protections to citizens though people reinforced the belief that the civil liberties of noncitizens should be limited. However the language of the Fourteenth Amendment is not considered by the court, so noncitizens cannot make constitutional claims. So poor conditions of facilities for immigrants are not breaking any constitutional laws in the U.S. This situation, in general, is sticky, and hard to understand the legal standing that protects the Immigrants fully. We need to overall improve the conditions of detention centers and the rights of illegal immigrants so they are treated properly, lawmakers can only do this, so advocating the cause to them.
Reference
- ACLU. IMMIGRATION DETENTION CONDITIONS https://www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights/immigrants-rights-and-detention/immigration-detention-conditions
- Bardes, B. A. (2019). American government & politics today, are enhanced. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
- Bochenek, M. G. (2018). Abusive Conditions for Women and Children in US Immigration Holding Cells. Human Rights Documents Online. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/report/2018/02/28/freezer/abusive-conditions-women-and-children-us-immigration-holding-cells
- Cashing In On Cruelty, (2017) https://aclu-co.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ACLU_CO_Cashing_In_On_Cruelty_09-17-19.pdf
- Gilman, D., & Romero, L. A. (2018). Immigration Detention, Inc. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 147160. doi: 10.1177/2311502418765414
- Ryo, E., & Peacock, I. (2018, December). THE LANDSCAPE OF IMMIGRATION DETENTION IN THE UNITED STATES. Retrieved from https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/sites/default/files/research/the_landscape_of_immigration_detention_in_the_united_states.pdf
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