Private Detention and the Immigration Industrial Complex
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Recent papers in Private Detention and the Immigration Industrial Complex
The U.S. immigration detention center is both a transnational space and a foreign policy microcosm. Its detainees reside physically within the nation yet legally outside, while its walls, fences, and doors clearly demarcate those bodies... more
The U.S. immigration detention center is both a transnational space and a foreign policy microcosm. Its detainees reside physically within the nation yet legally outside, while its walls, fences, and doors clearly demarcate those bodies that do not belong to the nation from those that do. The detention center is not merely a domestic place where foreign policy is executed. It is a place both locally and globally defined, where social interactions and cultural narratives transcend concrete walls and nation-state boundaries. Bodies are controlled, marked, and contested in this liminal space. This essay explores the detention and processing of Mariel Cubans at Fort Chaffee in 1980-1 as exercises of biopolitical management in the era of President Ronald Reagan’s revitalized nationalism. Through a process of inclusion and exclusion, a previously welcomed “anticommunist” exile group suddenly became cast by the media and politicians as “undesirable.” While some Cuban refugees were rendered acceptable additions to the national body through “American” cultural training, sponsorship, and resettlement, nonnational “excludables” were simultaneously rendered invisible through the act of detention.
This document reveals concerns raised by migrants detained at the Otero County Processing Center (OCPC) in Chaparral, New Mexico, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration detention facility run by the for-profit Management... more
This document reveals concerns raised by migrants detained at the Otero County Processing Center (OCPC) in Chaparral, New Mexico, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) immigration detention facility run by the for-profit Management and Training Corporation (MTC). OCPC opened in 2008, and has the capacity to detain up to 1,089 individuals on any given day. Due to both inconsistencies and secrecy in government reporting, it is unclear how much the facility costs. ICE internal documentation indicates that the facility receives anywhere from $91.03-$117.71 per day for any person detained by ICE.
ICE established Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) for ICE and ICE-contracted facilities. There are three sets of standards with the most recent standards being from 2011; OCPC supposedly operates under these most recent standards. However, as these standards are neither statutory nor incorporated into regulation, they are not legally enforceable and lack disciplinary and financial consequences for facilities that fail to comply. Both ICE and MTC maintain that the facility not only meets ICE’s PBNDS, but that it exceeds those standards to provide "a comfortable safe atmosphere to help time pass quickly" for those in their care.
People held at OCPC are displaced individuals seeking humanitarian aid, victims of human trafficking, and even legal permanent residents with longstanding community ties. The majority of people detained at OCPC have no criminal record and have not been charged with or convicted of any crimes. No one detained at OCPC is serving time for a crime, as they are being detained as an administrative measure. Some of them are asylum seekers, and they are seeking relief from deportation through the immigration courts. Though immigration detention is legally considered non-punitive, as it is a form of civil confinement, details of this report contribute to a growing body of literature indicating otherwise.
Conversations with 24 individuals detained at OCPC in 2015 identified 19 (79%) individuals who expressed a total of 75 complaints. Unstructured conversations that took place with 25 individuals over the course of a year (March 2017-March 2018) resulted in the documentation of a total of 176 complaints from 19 (76%) individuals. The latter group expressed unsolicited complaints, suggesting that if asked specific questions related to conditions at OCPC they would have provided further comments on the poor conditions at this facility. The inhumane conditions and abuses as represented by this report are probably an underrepresentation, and are likely more widespread than what is documented here. Complaints are tallied into 28 categories grouped into four areas of major concern: Unhealthy Conditions, Abuse and Exploitation, Social Isolation and Mental Anguish, and Barriers to Justice and Legal Access.
Details of these complaints are compared to reports and inspections written about OCPC by the Department of Homeland Security, specifically ICE and their contractors. Nine ICE documents made publicly available through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation by other immigrant rights advocacy groups were obtained, analyzed, and synthesized. These documents, dating from 2008 to 2016, are either 1) Enforcement and Removal Operations Facility Reviews or 2) Office of Detention Oversight Compliance Inspections. Details about OCPC from other documents such as the 2017 Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report are also covered. Over the last 10 years, OCPC has been found deficient in 98 components based on evaluations compared to established ICE standards for immigration detention facilities.
The comparison reveals that 1) MTC's public statements about the facility do not align with the accounts or experiences of those confined and living within OCPC; 2) there are troubling violations of rights and dehumanizing treatment occurring at OCPC, from the mundane, like filthy drinking water fountains to the egregious, such as retaliatory use of solitary confinement; and 3) ICE inspections are largely ineffective at maintaining and enforcing the standards of detention that ICE establishes for its facilities. As a result, migrants detained at OCPC are not safe or being cared for adequately. Rather they are subjected to inadequate and poor quality food, inadequate medical attention, harassment, cruel isolation, exploitation, retaliation, abuse, and unsanitary conditions, to name a few of the major complaints made by individuals detained at OCPC. They are detained with no clear end in sight to their imprisonment, and with highly constrained means of having their complaints addressed. ICE and MTC have created the conditions in which these individual languish.
This report highlights the need for more targeted collection of data on the conditions of immigration detention in all ICE and privately-run facilities to reveal how migrants are treated in United States (U.S.) immigration detention. However, given the history of deficient conditions since its opening a decade ago, and recent evidence showing that abusive conditions continue, it is time to close OCPC. Given the longer and more troubled history of ICE immigration detention facilities nationally, and ICE's repeated inability to abide by their own standards, it is time to end immigration detention in the U.S. ICE standards serve only to maintain a facade of compliance, while ICE and the for-profit companies with which they contract subject migrants to inhumane conditions with impunity.
ICE established Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) for ICE and ICE-contracted facilities. There are three sets of standards with the most recent standards being from 2011; OCPC supposedly operates under these most recent standards. However, as these standards are neither statutory nor incorporated into regulation, they are not legally enforceable and lack disciplinary and financial consequences for facilities that fail to comply. Both ICE and MTC maintain that the facility not only meets ICE’s PBNDS, but that it exceeds those standards to provide "a comfortable safe atmosphere to help time pass quickly" for those in their care.
People held at OCPC are displaced individuals seeking humanitarian aid, victims of human trafficking, and even legal permanent residents with longstanding community ties. The majority of people detained at OCPC have no criminal record and have not been charged with or convicted of any crimes. No one detained at OCPC is serving time for a crime, as they are being detained as an administrative measure. Some of them are asylum seekers, and they are seeking relief from deportation through the immigration courts. Though immigration detention is legally considered non-punitive, as it is a form of civil confinement, details of this report contribute to a growing body of literature indicating otherwise.
Conversations with 24 individuals detained at OCPC in 2015 identified 19 (79%) individuals who expressed a total of 75 complaints. Unstructured conversations that took place with 25 individuals over the course of a year (March 2017-March 2018) resulted in the documentation of a total of 176 complaints from 19 (76%) individuals. The latter group expressed unsolicited complaints, suggesting that if asked specific questions related to conditions at OCPC they would have provided further comments on the poor conditions at this facility. The inhumane conditions and abuses as represented by this report are probably an underrepresentation, and are likely more widespread than what is documented here. Complaints are tallied into 28 categories grouped into four areas of major concern: Unhealthy Conditions, Abuse and Exploitation, Social Isolation and Mental Anguish, and Barriers to Justice and Legal Access.
Details of these complaints are compared to reports and inspections written about OCPC by the Department of Homeland Security, specifically ICE and their contractors. Nine ICE documents made publicly available through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation by other immigrant rights advocacy groups were obtained, analyzed, and synthesized. These documents, dating from 2008 to 2016, are either 1) Enforcement and Removal Operations Facility Reviews or 2) Office of Detention Oversight Compliance Inspections. Details about OCPC from other documents such as the 2017 Office of the Inspector General (OIG) report are also covered. Over the last 10 years, OCPC has been found deficient in 98 components based on evaluations compared to established ICE standards for immigration detention facilities.
The comparison reveals that 1) MTC's public statements about the facility do not align with the accounts or experiences of those confined and living within OCPC; 2) there are troubling violations of rights and dehumanizing treatment occurring at OCPC, from the mundane, like filthy drinking water fountains to the egregious, such as retaliatory use of solitary confinement; and 3) ICE inspections are largely ineffective at maintaining and enforcing the standards of detention that ICE establishes for its facilities. As a result, migrants detained at OCPC are not safe or being cared for adequately. Rather they are subjected to inadequate and poor quality food, inadequate medical attention, harassment, cruel isolation, exploitation, retaliation, abuse, and unsanitary conditions, to name a few of the major complaints made by individuals detained at OCPC. They are detained with no clear end in sight to their imprisonment, and with highly constrained means of having their complaints addressed. ICE and MTC have created the conditions in which these individual languish.
This report highlights the need for more targeted collection of data on the conditions of immigration detention in all ICE and privately-run facilities to reveal how migrants are treated in United States (U.S.) immigration detention. However, given the history of deficient conditions since its opening a decade ago, and recent evidence showing that abusive conditions continue, it is time to close OCPC. Given the longer and more troubled history of ICE immigration detention facilities nationally, and ICE's repeated inability to abide by their own standards, it is time to end immigration detention in the U.S. ICE standards serve only to maintain a facade of compliance, while ICE and the for-profit companies with which they contract subject migrants to inhumane conditions with impunity.
This paper examines the indefinite preventative detention of non-citizens in the UK, arguing that the reasoning of the House of Lords in A v Secretary of State for the Home Department has not been applied within the crime control context.... more
This paper examines the indefinite preventative detention of non-citizens in the UK, arguing that the reasoning of the House of Lords in A v Secretary of State for the Home Department has not been applied within the crime control context. This paper analyses the jurisprudence in relation to indefinite preventive detention in the (non-terrorism) immigration context, arguing that whilst ideas emerging in anti-terrorism law have influenced immigration law, in a wider context, beyond terrorism, the internal logic of immigration control which justifies its discriminatory coercion with assertion of the sovereign right of the state to exclude aliens, has caused resistance to the reasoning of the majority of the House of Lords in A in regard to the preventive detention of non-citizens. It contends that the UK's reliance on these principles is undermined by the fact that the UK has exercised its sovereignty to expressly limit it through its ratification of the European Convention on Human Rights and other international human rights instruments.
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the Northwest Detention Center as representing a nexus of key aspects of the immigration debate. The NWDC is a private, for- profit immigration detention center in the city of Tacoma, Washington.... more
The purpose of this chapter is to explore the Northwest Detention Center as representing a nexus of key aspects of the immigration debate. The NWDC is a private,
for- profit immigration detention center in the city of Tacoma, Washington. In this chapter, we will explore how the NWDC, symbolically and in practice, represents a poignant expression of key dynamics of the “immigration debate” in the United States today. To meet these aims we explore several interlocking areas. First, we present a brief description of the NWDC itself, providing the reader with context about its purpose and development. Second, we present the NWDC as representative of widespread trends toward the privatization of prisons, and immigration detention more specifically. Third, we explore the NWDC as being a powerful expression of the increased movement toward the criminalization of immigration. Fourth, we show how these trends have led to various micro- and macro- level human rights violations, and how these are perpetrated
by the NWDC. Fifth, we explore how advocacy and human rights groups have responded to the center and the realities it embodies.
for- profit immigration detention center in the city of Tacoma, Washington. In this chapter, we will explore how the NWDC, symbolically and in practice, represents a poignant expression of key dynamics of the “immigration debate” in the United States today. To meet these aims we explore several interlocking areas. First, we present a brief description of the NWDC itself, providing the reader with context about its purpose and development. Second, we present the NWDC as representative of widespread trends toward the privatization of prisons, and immigration detention more specifically. Third, we explore the NWDC as being a powerful expression of the increased movement toward the criminalization of immigration. Fourth, we show how these trends have led to various micro- and macro- level human rights violations, and how these are perpetrated
by the NWDC. Fifth, we explore how advocacy and human rights groups have responded to the center and the realities it embodies.
- by Rich Furman and +2
- •
- Sociology, Social Work, Migration mobilities, Immigration
In Conlon, D. and Hiemstra, N. (2016) Intimate Economies of Immigration Detention: Critical Perspectives. NY: Routledge.
This article provides a comparative analysis of the practices of immigration detention since the 1980s.
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