U.S. Immigration System Is a Broken Behemoth

  One year after the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama announced that it intended to overhaul the country's heavily criticised immigration detention practices and create a "truly civil detention system", a new academic paper bolsters claims by human rights groups that real reform is still a long way off. 

The paper, titled "Immigration Detention and the Law: U.S. Policy and Legal Framework" and published by the Global Detention Project (GDP) based at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, points to a number of recent legal developments that could have enduring implications for efforts to reform detention practices.

A key finding of the paper is that there has been an upsurge in efforts at the national, state, and local levels to criminalise violations of immigration law, which could result in burgeoning detainee populations. 

"The United States has been steadily criminalizing immigration violations, while increasing the severity of penalties for non-citizens who violate immigration laws," according to the paper. 

The paper points to studies, like one by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, showing that since 2004, federal criminal prosecutions have jumped more than 40 percent, driven largely by increases in immigration prosecutions, which now make up nearly half of all federal criminal filings. 

The GDP paper also highlights a string of recently passed laws at the state and local levels, including Arizona's "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act", which if implemented would require officials to significantly bolster detention capacities to handle the large numbers of people who would be detained. 

While a federal judge recently blocked key parts of the Arizona law, the paper points to other recently passed laws - in Massachusetts and New York - that crack down on undocumented immigrants ability to work and find housing, making them increasingly vulnerable to immigration enforcement.

"The issue of immigration is yet another intractable problem the Obama administration inherited but which it must do something about," says Michael Flynn, lead researcher of the Global Detention Project. 

"Because of the policies of his predecessors, the country's detention system has grown exorbitantly in recent years, and without the oversight needed to ensure people are treated humanely," according to Flynn. 

Flynn says that while the administration has taken some important steps to reform detention practices, much remains to be done. 

For instance, the paper points out that while the administration has followed through on its promise to restrict the detention of children by ending this practice at the controversial privately-run Hutto detention centre in Texas, children are still detained at the Berks detention facility in Leesport, Pennsylvania. 

The GDP paper backs up complaints by human rights groups that although Obama has achieved some things, there is a long way to go. 

"Despite steps in the right direction during the past year, we are disappointed that many detained asylum seekers and other immigrants in custody have seen little change," states a press release from Human Rights First marking the one-year anniversary of the administration's reform announcement. "Refugees seeking asylum in the United States should not be held in jails or jail-like facilities while their claims for protection the U.S. are adjudicated."

Similarly, the American Civil Liberties Union released a study last Friday which argues that while "Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has made some progress under the guidance of its newly-established Office for Detention Policy and Planning, major improvements in four vital detention areas - mental disability, health care, sexual abuse, and mandatory and prolonged detention - need to be undertaken."