Congressional mandate ensures thousands of immigrants remain behind bars

United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have the facilities to keep tens of thousands of detainees locked up each day, and a new report suggests they’re having no problem making that happen.

One reason, the Washington Post’s Nick Miroff wrote over the
weekend, is a little-known “bed mandate” authorized by Congress
in 2006 that makes it a policy for ICE to keep around 34,000
detainees in custody every day at costly detention centers.

Even though illegal crossings at the Mexican border are
approaching new lows not seen in decades, those
expensive-to-operate facilities are brimming with foreign-born
suspects — including many harmless, non-violent offenders —
in order for federal authorities to stay close to their quota.

Only around 11 percent of detainees at these federal facilities
were convicted of violent crime as of 2009, the Post reported,
but ICE has resorted regardless to picking up immigrants and
sticking them inside detention centers, in turn costing the
country billions of dollars annually on an initiative that some
are now questioning.

According to Miroff, ICE has been “reaching deeper into the
criminal justice system to vacuum up foreign-born, legal US
residents convicted of any crimes that could render them eligible
for deportation.” They are then sent to facilities like the
Karnes County Civil Detention Center Miroff visited outside of
San Antonio, Texas, and catered to at a cost of over $150 a day.

By comparison, locking up a detainee in a regular jail cell would
cost only $10, Miroff wrote. As far as the for-profit private
companies that operate detention facilities like the one in
Karnes County, however, keeping a high number of residents within
its walls means equally impressive profits.

Now amid a nearly two-week-old government shutdown and the
looming possibility of the US declaring default for the first
time in the country’s history, ICE’s practice of putting any
immigrant it can catch behind bars at astronomical costs is
causing concern.

Miroff notes that immigration depending and deportation costs
Uncle Sam around $2.8 billion annually right now, and even a few
months ago Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano suggested
that ICE ease back on its bed mandate quota to pinch pennies.

“All I can say is look, we’re doing our very best to minimize
the impacts of sequester,” Napolitano said back in February.
“But there’s only so much I can do. I’m supposed to have
34,000 detention beds for immigration. How do I pay for
those?”

Under budget cuts, Napolitano said her department “would
not be able to maintain the 34,000 detention beds as required by
Congress.” Eight months after those remarks, however,
facilities are just as full as ever.

Julie Myers Wood, a former ICE director appointed under
then-President George W. Bush, told the Post that the quota
almost made sense during that administration when US Border
Patrol agents were arresting over a million people each year.
With numbers now nowhere near that statistic, today she says
“it doesn’t make sense” to keep housing immigrants who are
scooped up by authorities and processed into detention facilities
until eventual court hearings can be scheduled.

“The explicit purpose of ICE detaining people is to make sure
they show up for their immigration hearings, so it would make
sense to consider less costly, more humane alternatives that meet
that same goal,” added Ruthie Epstein, legislative policy
analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Last week, around 20,000 people marched on Washington during a
massive immigration rally meant to raise awareness of the White
House’s continuing habit of deporting immigrants not even awarded
a chance at applying for US citizenship. Around 200 people were
arrested, including Democratic US Representatives John Lewis (GA)
said Joe Crowley (D-NY), Keith Ellison (D-MN), Al Green (D-TX),
Raul Grijalva (AZ), Luis Guiterrez (IL), Charlie Rangel (NY) and
Jan Schakowsky (IL).

Copyright: RT