Skip to content
Link copied to clipboard

Immigrant-detention reform includes move to Leesport facility

The federal department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement yesterday announced an immediate overhaul of its sprawling, complaint-ridden system for detaining more than 32,000 immigrants in 350 facilities.

The federal department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement yesterday announced an immediate overhaul of its sprawling, complaint-ridden system for detaining more than 32,000 immigrants in 350 facilities.

While the reforms are designed to have impact nationally, one change puts a spotlight on Pennsylvania.

ICE said yesterday that it would immediately close the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility in Texas, which immigrant advocates have assailed as inadequate for children. From now on, families facing deportation or awaiting decisions on asylum applications will be detained only at Berks Family Residential Center, a facility of about 80 beds, in Leesport, Pa.

"As I understand it, Berks is smaller than Hutto. Unless they are adding more beds, they will have to look at alternatives to detention, which I think would be a good thing," said lawyer Judi Bernstein Baker, of HIAS and Council, an advocacy group, which runs a project at the Berks facility to provide legal representation for detainees.

The changes, said ICE assistant secretary John Morton, are designed to bring direct management control to 350 disparate lock-up facilities.

Under the current system, while the vast number of immigrants are detained for civil matters, they generally are held in county jails under contract to ICE or in penal-style centers operated by private contractors.

Critics say immigrants charged with purely civil violations, such as over-staying a visa, should not be treated like common criminals or housed in similar conditions.

"The population that we detain is different than the typical population detained in jail. We need to adjust the balance," Morton said in a conference call with reporters.

"With these reforms, ICE will move away from our present ... jail-oriented approach. ... The system will no longer rely primarily on excess capacity in penal institutions. In the next three to five years ICE will design facilities ... for immigration detention purposes" only, the agency said in a statement.

"It's a positive step. Clearly Hutto stood out as a worst-case example," said Regan Cooper, director of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition. She noted that even in a bad economy, "there is a lot of money to be made in immigrant detention," which is why she welcomed strict regulation.

A statistical portrait derived from an Associated Press Freedom of Information Act request found that of the 73 immigrants in detention in Berks on the snapshot date of Jan. 25, none had criminal convictions, Cooper said. She added that all together they had been confined for 7,156 days, at an approximate cost of $99 a day.

Morton said the process of transferring families from Texas to Pennsylvania would begin immediately.

"For the immediate future we will use Berks to its capacity," Morton said. To the extent that ICE needs more capacity for families, he said, the agency would explore alternatives to detention, including supervised release and electronic monitoring with ankle bracelets.

In addition to closing Hutto and transferring its population to Berks, ICE will create a new office of policy and planning tailored for ICE's unique needs; hire a medical expert to review detainees' medical complaints; develop a national strategy for using alternatives to detention; create two advisory panels of local and national organizations to provide feedback; and hire managers to work in the 23 largest centers that collectively house 40 percent of the detainees.

The announcement of the changes follows a chorus of criticism by immigrant advocates about long delays and shabby treatment in detention. The American Civil Liberties Union and others have filed lawsuits seeking improved conditions, and legislation was introduced yesterday in the U.S. Senate under the title, "The Secure and Safe Detention and Asylum Act of 2009."

Philadelphia attorney James Orlow, a former head of the National Immigration Lawyers Association, said: "No government official likes to be told what to do. But when they recognize they have a problem they will fix it and take credit, which is happening here."

For his part, Morton said the timing of yesterday's announcement was unrelated to outside pressure.

"Is it related in any way to the litigation? No. I'm very serious about these kinds of reforms. I've been here two months and I wanted to do this as soon as I could."