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Amnesty International reports that the immigrant population held in United States detention has surged in the past decade. Thosedetained include asylum seekers, survivors of torture and humantrafficking, lawful permanent US residents and the parents of UScitizen children.

"Itbecame the rule that people would be detained," said Sarnata Reynolds,policy director for refugee and migrant rights at Amnesty InternationalUSA.

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Another man, a Buddhist monk, fled Tibet where he had been tortured for his religious and political beliefs. He arrived in New York, only to be placed in detention for 10 months. In 2007, he received permission to remain in the US.

March 26, 2009

Matt Kelley guest blogs at Change.org about the consequences of privatization and proliferation of immigration detention. Read "Prisons as Stimulus".

BY IRIS MORALES

Current United States immigration policies destroy families.  One in ten US familes with children live in mixed-status families of both citizens and non-citizens.  Harsh policies are eroding our civil liberties and costing $1 billion a year to house detained immigrants. Thousands are held in US jails without the right to bail or court appointed counsel.  

Through legislation and public acquiescence, the US has created two societies: one for citizens and another, second-class society with limited legal rights and social benefits, for non-citizens.

Detention of immigrants is a "growing US industry." Even this five-year old map shows the dramatic increase in detention facilities across the country.  Remember Halliburton - the company run by Dick Chaney from 1995 to 2000.  Well, they got a $385 million contract from the Bush Administration to build and operate new detention centers in the US. The Bush budget allocated more than $6.3 billion to detention programs in 2006. 

In deportation proceedings, immigration judges, stripped of the discretionary power they once had, are unable to take into account individual circumstances. H.R. 182, a bill introduced by Congressman Jose Serrano, would give discretionary authority to an immigration judge to determine that an immigrant  parent of a United States citizen child should not be ordered removed, deported, or excluded from the United States. While it is not the solution to the systemic change that is necessary, it could afford some much needed relief from the government sanctioned attacks on families. 

By SUZANNE GAMBOA

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 100,000 parents whose children are U.S. citizens were deported over the decade that ended in 2007, a Department of Homeland Security's investigation has found.
The parents were removed from the country on immigration violations or because they had committed crimes. The removals of the 108,434 parents were among the approximately 2.2 million carried out by immigration officials between 1998 and 2007, Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner said in a report made public Friday.

Skinner warned the numbers were incomplete because Immigration and Customs Enforcement doesn't fully document such cases. The agency also does not keep track of how many children each parent has. He recommended immigration officials start collecting more data on removed parents and their children.

In response to the findings, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement said it would study whether it can gather better information. Its study is due in about two months.

"I am saddened, but not surprised to learn that our government, in its harsh anti-immigrant stance, has split hundreds of thousands of families apart over the past decade," said Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y.
Serrano serves on the House Appropriations Committee's panel that helps decide how much money is provided to the Homeland Security Department each year.  He has filed a bill, the Child Citizen Protection Act, that would allow immigration judges to consider whether immigrants have children who are U.S. citizens when making deportation decisions.

"If, in fact, some (children) were left behind here, then you have the sad tragedy of breaking up families," Serrano said. "If they were taken back, I would argue the direct result of our actions is the deportation of our citizens. How do you deport a U.S. citizen?"

Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Barbara Gonzales said the agency was reviewing the report and was unable to comment immediately.

Children of immigrant families who are U.S. citizens have long created a dilemma for Congress as it has tried to control immigration. People born in the U.S. automatically become U.S. citizens.  But American children cannot petition for their parents to become legal U.S. residents until they are at least 21.

Immigration officials reported 319,382 deportations in 2007, compared to 174,813 in 1998. Skinner said the number of parents removed over that period generally increased, with 13,081 individual parents removed in 1998.

Some of the parents were removed from the country more than once, so in the 10 years there were actually 180,466 removals of the 108,434 parents.

On the Net:

    * Homeland Security Department IG reports: http://www.dhs.gov/xoig/rpts/