Abstract
Immigration Detention is a patchwork of public and private correctional facilities overseen by ICE, a federal enforcement agency. In June 2021, ICE detained 16,460 adults in 121 facilities in 38 states, frequently alongside pretrial and sentenced inmates and U.S. Marshals Service prisoners, under varying conditions ICE established with five different sets of detention standards, all of them based on corrections case law and in effect today. Detainees have not fared well in ICE’s custody, especially during the pandemic. In CY2020, ICE processed 137,749 detainees, tested only 80,200 for COVID-19 (58%), and recorded 8622 positive cases (11%) at over 100 facilities. Most testing positive for COVID-19—7687 (89%)—contracted the virus in ICE custody, including eight detainees who died. An additional 14,728 detainees (18%) had one or more conditions placing them at high risk for severe illness due to COVID-19 of which ICE only released 5801 (39%). This paper utilizes ICE data and documents on government websites to evaluate ICE’s approach to detention management and explore its impact on conditions of detention and how it impeded its readiness and response to the pandemic. It concludes with recommendations that ICE decrease reliance on detention and decriminalize its policies and practices.
Highlights
Immigration Detention is a patchwork of public and private correctional facilities overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal enforcement agency
This paper considers several of the ways in which ICE has misapplied corrections case law, policy and practices to the detriment of the detainees in its custody, during the pandemic
Chief among its recommendations to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in incarceral settings, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) urged correctional and detention facilities to practice extreme social distancing, continual and correct use of personal protective equipment (PPE), and heightened sanitation and vigorous hygiene facility-wide, coupled with cohorting and screening for symptomatic individuals, testing of asymptomatic individuals, quarantine and contact tracing, and when it became available, vaccination
Summary
The Body Ritual Among the Nacirema (Miner 1956) is an anthropological essay, a culture-free description of a man, a Nacirema, which is American spelled backwards. I moved through segregation housing, still operating as it had when it was a prison, food services, the laundry, law library, visitation, and commissary, onto the recreation yard. This detention center looked like a correctional facility in almost every respect and, initially, appeared to operate as one would (Goffman 1961) and, make no mistake, that would not be a good thing. The vast majority of the people in ICE’s custody are contributing members of intact, extended families, with job skills, employment histories, and community ties They do not want any trouble, only the opportunity to be heard and hopefully, secure relief. ICE’s criminalization of the immigrant deprives all the people in its custody of their rights under international and federal law and absolves Immigration Enforcement of its responsibilities to the detained (Bowling and Westenra 2018)
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