The Immigration Jails Are Overflowing

Chertoff: Immigrant Detention Facilities Under Strain

The history of our immigration policy is anything but fair-minded, rational or comprehensive. At times we have vented our frustration over immigration--legal and illegal--but placing quotas on certain ethnic groups and countries of origin, as well as placing outright bans on some groups along the way. In our history of immigration we have exercised institutional discrimination against Chinese, Japanese, Slavic, Slovak, Hungarian, Arab, Russian Jew, Sephardic Jew, Central Eastern European Jew, Italian, Irish, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Pakistani, Indian, Carribean, Central American and many other immigrants, depsite the ideal that we are a land of immigrants that sought out freedom and opportunity.

It would appear that any ethnic group that manages to tick off our political leadership or general populous at any given time is subject to severe immigration retaliation, criminal enforcement of our dysfunctional immigration laws, and the full brunt of our institutionalized discriminatory practices.

We now face the legacy of our lack of cohesive, sound and rational immigration policy. No, I am not advocating we throw open the gates and allow just anyone to cross our borders. I understand that a sound immigration policy and system of enforcement is absolutely necessary. But we need to develop and implement that policy in complete fairness. If we allow folks from one country to immigrate, then we need to allow folks from other countries to immigrate as well. We cannot afford to play favorites as it undermines our position in the world and our first principles.

So, what we need to do is set up some reasonable standards. These standards could include the need to have financial support, a clean bill of physical and mental health, sponsorship by a US citizen if financial support is lacking, a clean criminal record, a clean political record (i.e. not a member of Al Qaeda, the Nazi Party during WWII, etc.), the ability to speak or learn English (out of necessity not a legal mandate), and a commitment to integrating and assimilating into our American culture.

Our policies toward those seeking asylum also need to make sense. No one should be turned away because they are seeking economic asylum from a country that uses economic and financial controls to oppress them. Myanmar, India, North Korea, China and several other places use economics to control their subjects.

But the evidence of our failure in regard to our immigration policies, especially under the current trend to incarcerate and deport anyone that is here with even a hint of an illegal entry, is in the fact that we are filling up our INS and border patrol detention centers faster than we can handle the flow of processing. Whether people realize it or not, this approach is costing us MILLIONS of dollars that would be better spent preventing illegal crossings, securing our ports, educating our children or providing a comprehensive health care plan for everyone in our nation. Now we're contemplating spending millions more on additional detention centers, without explaining who is going to fund that construction or why our immigration policies remain completely munged and dysfunctional.

But none of that seems to be very important to the ultra-conservatives that are currently destroying our government.

The Homeland Security Department soon may need to either buy additional space in existing jails to detain apprehended illegal immigrants or implement a $385 million contingency contract to build more detention centers, sources told Government Executive Tuesday.

Unless lawmakers revoke a provision that prevents the deportation of Salvadorans, a contingency contract already agreed upon with Halliburton subsidiary KBR may be put into effect to offset the amount of space being taken up by arrested Salvadorans, one of the sources said.

DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff told lawmakers in written testimony for a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Tuesday that Salvadorans' "presence puts a strain on our detention facilities at a tremendous cost." He thanked the House for passing legislation that would do away with the provision. The Senate has yet to take action on the bill (H.R. 6094).

At Tuesday's hearing, Rep. Stevan Pearce, R-N.M., told Chertoff that detention space for illegal immigrants is in short supply in his district, which borders Mexico.

"We're at the threshold where it begins to deteriorate," he said.

Pearce is not the first lawmaker to push DHS officials to fix detention problems; another Republican congressman, Rep. Mark Foley of Florida, told Julie Myers, head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency within DHS, during a July hearing that "there's no place to put" illegal immigrants.

"Space has always been an issue; it was the cause of the catch-and-release program," said one senior Border Patrol source who works on the Southwestern border with Mexico. "It's always been killing us."

Another DHS source said an abundance of space is available in existing facilities, but the department would need to rent it.

This source said the department is still pushing to meet its goal of having nearly 28,000 beds at jails for arrested illegal immigrants. "All we really need is money," the source said, adding that "there is excess bed capacity in state and local facilities that is available to the extent we can afford it."

But there is a possibility that "we may construct some new detention facilities," the source said.