More Thoughts on Detention

As a follow-up to my post below, Support the '"Dignity not Detention" Campaign, I wanted to add some relevant information I came across in a report released in September 2009 by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).

The authors of the MPI report cite facts obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by an Associated Press reporter through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

ICE responded to a FOIA request filed by AP reporter Michelle Roberts on January 25, 2009 with the following information, which Ms. Roberts published in an article dated March 16, 2009.

· Of 32,000 ICE detainees held one year ago, 18,690-- or 58%-- did not have criminal convictions. In other words, these individuals were held in immigration custody simply for civil violations of immigration law, such as oversatying a visa or entering the U.S. illegally, and not because they'd been convicted of a criminal offense which, under immigration law, renders a non-citizen deportable. As such, they should not be deemed a danger to society;

· It costs an average of $141 per night to detain an immigrant, a figure that is $50 higher than the figure cited by Detention Watch Network (DWN)on its website a couple of years ago.

In addition, the MPI report states that in 1994, prior to the passage of the "mandatory detention" provision of law described in the post below, 6785 non-citizens were detained by immigration authorities each night. By 2008, the number had risen to 33,400. In only three years, that the cost to taxpayers of such an overzealous detention policy is $1.72 billion, the same figure cited by DWN. The total number of immigrants detained in 2008 was 378,582.

For more information: The MPI report is entitled, “Immigration detention: Can ICE Meet Its Legal Imperatives and Case Management Responsibilities?” by Donald Kerwin and Serena Yi-Ying Lin

For Michelle Roberts’ article see, “Immigrants Face Long Detention, Few Rights,” Associated Press, March 16, 2009.