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2007-03-25 Home Front: Culture Wars
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Is government's policy to detain immigrant families fair?
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You may not know, the Government is confining people on immigration violations while they await outcomes of their asylum petitions or deportation. Such a facility is here in central Texas, just south of Austin.
This is a long article, with the typical Statesman's bias, but this confinement of illegals maybe be unknown to some of you. It's only getting publicity, because it's so close to Austin.
Article is long, and behind registration block
Mods, delete is needed.. I couldn't figure out what to leave out.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
TAYLOR Conversations with her mother and the son she left behind in Somalia because she feared for her life there. Visits to her grandmother's tranquil vegetable garden. Walks past her grandparents' house on her way home; they were always waiting to greet her.
These recurring images filled Bahjo Hosen's dreams as she slept with her 2-year-old son, Mustafa, curled up next to her on a narrow metal bunk bed in a roughly 8-foot-by-12-foot cell with an open toilet and sink in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center.
Bahjo Hosen and her son Mustafa, now 3, spent more than 210 nights at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former prison in Taylor, awaiting the outcome of their asylum petition. Immigration officials say such centers keep families together and ensure immigrants don't skip hearings. But critics say the lockups are inhumane and are pushing for alternatives.
ACLU lawyer Vanita Gupta, left, ACLU of Texas Legal Director Lisa Graybill and Barbara Hines, who directs the immigration clinic at the University of Texas Law School were part of a group that toured the Hutto facility last month.
Some cells at the Hutto center include a baby bed and children's toys. More than half of the almost 2,000 people who have been detained there since last May have been minors.
Mustafa and his mother, Bahjo Hosen, now live in an Austin home for refugees. Bahjo fled Somalia with Mustafa after her brother was killed by a powerful tribe, leaving behind her husband and older son.
On most mornings about 5:30, a guard's rap on the door jarred Bahjo awake, drawing a dark curtain on her dreams and beginning another day of confinement while she and Mustafa pursued asylum in the U.S. immigration system's slow-grinding bureaucracy.
"I never dreamed I would be in jail," said Hosen, who fled a Somalian clan's death threats, only to be locked up in the immigrant detention center in Taylor.
The former state prison is in the bull's-eye of a growing controversy over a federal policy that requires families like Bahjo and Mustafa to be confined on immigration violations while they await outcomes of their asylum petitions or deportation. The waits can drag on for days, months, sometimes years.
The controversy raises two questions: Is it inhumane to confine children and families for running afoul of immigration laws? And are there better alternatives than locking people up?
Critics answer yes to both. Lawsuits filed on behalf of 10 children confined in Taylor accuse federal officials of illegally and inhumanely housing children, failing to meet the standards of a 1997 court settlement for the care of minors in immigration custody, and ignoring Congress' orders to exhaust other options before detaining families in homelike environments.
At a hearing on the lawsuits last week, even U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks expressed exasperation at the restrictions under which families are living at the Hutto facility.
"This is detention. This isn't the penitentiary," Sparks said. Detainees "have less rights than the people I send to the penitentiary."
Sparks ordered that some restrictions on attorney visits with detainee clients be removed immediately.
But U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials defend Hutto as a model facility that keeps families together while ensuring that they don't skip their immigration hearings.
They also say detention helps deter illegal immigration. In February, Department of Homeland Security officials credited detention and other enforcement efforts with a 27 percent drop in arrests of illegal immigrants since October, compared with the same period a year ago.
Advocates for detainees say a significant number of those confined at Hutto are seeking asylum and thus have strong incentives to attend their hearings. They say the government can enforce immigration laws without locking families up. In fact, Congress has allocated millions of dollars for nonpenal alternatives to detention. "The choice is not between enforcement of immigration laws and humane treatment of immigrant families," said Vanita Gupta, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. "ICE can achieve both objectives."
Calls for change
The 512-bed detention center in Taylor opened last May amid calls in Washington for tougher enforcement of immigration laws. The only other family detention center, in Leesport, Pa., has 84 beds and opened in 2001. Simona Colon, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer-in-charge at Hutto, testified in federal court that about 2,000 people more than half of them minors have passed through the facility. About 680 people have been released on bail or parole during the current fiscal year, and about 400 have been removed from the country. Another 405 are there now.
The Hutto facility enabled the government to end the so-called "catch and release" of illegal immigrants from countries other than Mexico when there weren't enough detention beds to hold them. (Because their deportation is easier, Mexicans caught illegally in the U.S. are usually returned to Mexico within hours of their arrest.)
In the past, most non-Mexican families were either separated and held individually or released together and told to appear later before an immigration judge. The government says that most didn't show up and that more than half a million immigrants who have been ordered deported are presumed to still be in the country.
But even as Congress responded to calls for tougher border enforcement, some lawmakers said they were troubled by the treatment of children and families arrested on immigration violations.
House and Senate appropriations committees first told immigration officials in 2005 to stop separating families and to find alternatives to penal detention when possible. Lawmakers cited a supervised release program already in use though not with families and said that if detention is necessary it should be in homelike environments. Current funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement calls for such an approach.
Many families are fleeing violence or persecution in their own countries and seeking asylum here. Federal officials say they do not track how many asylum seekers are at individual detention facilities. But in early February, Gary Mead, assistant director for detention and removal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, estimated that in a population of about 380 people at the Hutto facility, 75 families were seeking asylum conservatively, 40 percent of all detainees there at that time. (The population fluctuates daily as people are released and others are brought in.)
Some of these asylum seekers the government doesn't track the numbers ultimately win the right to stay in the U.S. Meanwhile, they say, they are treated like criminals.
Federal officials say they are caught in a dilemma.
"If we break families up and put them in separate detention facilities, we get criticized," Mead said. "We feel this is a humane approach."
Mead says detention reduces illegal immigration by thwarting smugglers who once exploited families by promising they would go free if caught entering the country with children. Federal officials also claim that smugglers sneaked kids in with strangers, trying to pass them off as family units.
That the Hutto center has never been filled to capacity, Mead said, is "a sign to us that word is getting out that coming as a family is not going to be a free ticket into the country."
Barbara Hines, who directs the immigration clinic at the University of Texas Law School and has represented several families held at Hutto, challenges that contention.
"The people that we see are fleeing gangs, domestic violence, and I think that they're trying to find safety wherever they can. So I don't think that they're deterred," said Hines, who is one of the attorneys for plaintiffs in the federal lawsuits. "And I think that's the problem with their enforcement policy: They lump everybody into one category, and they don't consider families and children."
Keeping watch
If the old policy of letting illegal immigrants go was called "catch and release," the supervised release program that federal officials use in select cases could be called "catch and watch."
The immigration and customs agency employs its Intensive Supervision Appearance Program only in Miami; Baltimore; Kansas City, Mo.; St. Paul, Minn.; San Francisco; Philadelphia; Portland, Ore.,; and Denver. Since its inception in 2004 and through December 2006, 4,309 adult participants showed up at their court hearings 98 percent of the time.
Federal officials say participants are not public safety, national security or flight risks. They live in a house arrest-type situation and may be subject to unannounced home visits by authorities, wear a steel ankle bracelet that monitors their whereabouts and report to immigration officials at frequent intervals, said Jack Herzig, a Philadelphia attorney who has represented clients in the program.
"In comparison to prison, of course, (the program) has certain advantages," Herzig said. But he said it still takes a toll. "There is an emotional stress upon people in a position where they're not in prison but they're certainly not free. I don't think it's a placebo."
In 1997 the Vera Institute of Justice began testing supervised release in New York City for the former Immigration and Naturalization Service. It found that in about 500 cases of asylum seekers, 93 percent of those released to the supervision of family members appeared at their final hearing.
Supervised release costs less than half as much as detention, the nonprofit organization said. Federal officials did not respond to a question about cost comparison.
Despite congressional committees' direction to use alternatives to detention when possible, U.S. Rep. John Carter, R-Round Rock, a member of one of those panels, said he thinks the Hutto facility "offers the optimal solution to our nation's growing illegal immigration problem."
Carter, whose district includes Taylor, toured the facility Feb. 23, saying afterward that it provides "a humane and safe alternative to 'catch and release.' "
"I'm confused as to how he reached that conclusion," said Lisa Graybill, legal director with the ACLU of Texas. "Perhaps he has different standards for how children should be treated in this country. It's indisputably a jail."
Mead suggested that placing families in supervised release is not practical, since immigration officials expect that most who are not seeking asylum will be deported relatively quickly.
However, Bahjo and Mustafa slept more than 210 nights in their cell in Taylor. By the time an immigration judge granted him and his mother asylum on Jan. 30, it was believed they held the dubious record for longest confinement at Hutto.
Their's is a classic example of why it's bad policy to detain asylum seekers, said Sonia Ansari, Hosen's attorney. Ansari said Hosen turned herself in to immigration authorities and posed little if any risk of fleeing.
"Bahjo believed in the process from the very beginning," Ansari said.
'A prison is a prison'
"We're not incarcerating families," Mead said last month as he led a tightly controlled news media tour of the sprawling Hutto facility, offering a rare glimpse into life inside its fluorescent lighted corridors.
During the 80-minute tour, officials showed off classrooms, a gym, cafeteria, a computer lab, common living areas and detainees' rooms. A sliver of light squeezed through the narrow window, roughly 10 inches wide by 6 feet tall, in each spartan cell. Some cells had cribs.
Reporters weren't allowed to interview detainees, who were seen briefly in their purple-and-green uniforms, eating lunch in the cafeteria and being escorted down hallways. Outside, coils of concertina wire rimmed the fence around the facility. The wire has since been removed.
The tour followed a drumbeat of complaints by detainees, attorneys and refugee and immigrant advocates alleging that immigrants have been denied adequate diets, education, recreation, and medical and mental health care.
Mead told reporters much work had been done to make the Hutto facility more family-friendly, and staff members outlined an array of services, including nutritious meals planned by dietitians.
At last week's court hearing, Colon and government attorneys stressed that their efforts to comply with the so-called Flores agreement, the 1997 settlement setting care standards for minors in custody, are constantly evolving. Colon cited a number of policy changes made in recent weeks or days, such as allowing detainees contact visits with family members. Previously, visitors and detainees were separated by a Plexiglas window and spoke by telephone.
The educational program a particular target of critics when it was one hour per day, then four has increased again to seven hours, though it includes two hours for lunch and recreation.
Civil rights and refugee advocates have previously called the changes window dressing that fails to address the issue of incarceration. They recommend parole for more families, especially asylum seekers who can establish identity and demonstrate a credible fear of persecution in their homeland.
"They could be serving food from the Four Seasons in there. A prison is a prison, and it needs to be closed," said Rebecca Bernhardt, an attorney for the ACLU of Texas.
Threats to detention
Bahjo and Mustafa Hosen slipped into the United States last June riding an inner tube across the Rio Grande. Somewhere near Hidalgo, a stranger gave them water. Bahjo insisted that the woman call immigration authorities so that she could surrender and request asylum.
She said that in Somalia, she had witnessed her brother's murder by members of a powerful Somali tribe. Islamic courts were pressuring her to reveal the killers' identities and threatened torture and imprisonment.
Fearing for her life, Bahjo fled with Mustafa, leaving her husband and 7-year-old son behind.
Now living temporarily in Austin at a home for refugee women and children, the 26-year-old Muslim with a warm, slightly gap-toothed smile reflected serenely on her stay at the Hutto detention center. Mustafa hovered at her side, a force of playful mischief.
At Taylor, Hosen received free legal help from the Political Asylum Project of Austin. She couldn't afford to pay $3,500 bails for herself and her son.
Hosen and other former detainees have often described detention at Hutto in stark terms, with guards and rules governing every aspect of their lives, from when they awoke to when they went to bed. Though cell doors were not locked, an opened door triggered a laser alarm, bringing guards to investigate. Head counts were held four times daily. Detainees couldn't move about the facility without guard escort.
When Mustafa began vomiting and losing weight, officials denied her request that he be given multivitamins. Though Hosen praised some guards for their compassion, she said others treated detainees like prisoners and threatened to break up families.
Once, a male guard walked in on her while she was using the toilet, a humiliating experience that left her distraught. Mustafa saw her crying. Yet Hosen said she harbors no ill will against the system that eventually welcomed her into the United States.
"Everybody needs life experiences," she said softly. "I'm not going to regret this. Never."
"She believes the conditions should be improved or the policy of imprisoning asylum seekers done away with, but she holds no grudge against the system," said Ansari, her attorney.
Meanwhile, dreams of a future in the United States are replacing the ones Hosen had in her cell. She said she wants to study and work perhaps as an interpreter and to be reunited in her new country with her husband and 7-year-old son. 
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Posted by Sherry 2007-03-25 17:41||
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Posted by Mac 2007-03-25 23:47||
2007-03-25 23:47||
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