ICE Official Wants to Expand ‘Alternatives to Detention’ Programs

CQ HOMELAND SECURITY – BORDER SECURITY

March 16, 2007

ICE Official Wants to Expand ‘Alternatives to Detention’ Programs

By Eleanor Stables, CQ Staff

The head of illegal immigrant detentions at the Department of Homeland Security wants to expand alternatives to detention centers, which have come under criticism recently.

John Torres, director of the Office of Detention and Removal Operations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an interview that he would like to expand the use of some “Alternatives to Detention” programs that remotely monitor illegal immigrants awaiting a court appearance.

The Electronic Monitoring Devices program requires illegal immigrants to call into a reporting system from a designated phone and wear ankle bracelets that emit a radio frequency that can be monitored.

Another non-detention program, the Intensive Supervision Appearance program, involves the ankle bracelets, as well as curfews, and home and office visits.

Illegal immigrants can decline to participate in the programs and instead opt for a detention center.

The programs are less expensive ($22 a night) than detention ($95 a night).

ICE processed 8,300 non-detained illegal immigrants through the Alternatives to Detention program, and removed more than 186,600 illegal immigrants from the country in fiscal 2006, according to DHS.

Michelle Brané, director of the detention and asylum program at the Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, said in prepared testimony that improvements have been made at a detention center holding illegal immigrant families — the T. Don Hutto Family Residential Facility — since recent media reports of inadequate schooling for children and other conditions.

She was speaking at a Thursday hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border, Maritime and Global Counterterrorism.

Children at Hutto receive eight hours of education a day compared to one hour, as found earlier this year by nonprofit organizations visiting the facility, according to Brané. Razor wire has been removed from the perimeter of the facility, and children are no longer required to wear uniforms, she said.

But the changes are “cosmetic and do not address the fundamental issue that the system of family detention is overwhelmingly inappropriate for families,” and DHS should consider alternatives to detention, Brané said.

ICE opened the Hutto facility in Texas in May 2006 specifically to accommodate illegal immigrant families and as part of efforts to end the so-called catch and release approach. Under this approach, non-Mexican illegal immigrants were issued a court date and then released because detention centers were at maximum capacity. Most did not appear for the hearings.

Before ICE had facilities for families, some illegal immigrants would deliberately bring children with them when crossing the border, knowing that ICE would be less likely to detain families.

Torres said he has seen dead children who were the victims of the strategy.

Some parents would rent out their children for such a purpose, especially younger children who are harder to interview by authorities, according to Torres.

Brané acknowledged the exploitation of children and that court appearance rates under catch and release were low. However, ICE’s new policy of fingerprinting everyone apprehended illegally crossing the border will identify a child detained more than once and with a different adult, she said.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to know how much of a deterrent that would be to smugglers or illegal immigrants.

ICE’s Torres said ICE ranks detainees to prevent putting noncriminal ones together with criminals that could pose a risk to officers or detainees.

A murderer wouldn’t be put with a noncriminal detainee, for example, he said.

If ICE learns of a detainee’s criminal record the agency was not previously aware of, it will reclassify the detainee, he said.

ICE spokeswoman Pat Reilly said 65 percent of detained illegal immigrants are in state or local jails and prisons, 2 percent are in federal prisons, 14 percent in ICE-owned facilities and 19 percent in contractors’ facilities.

ICE detention centers hold 28,000 illegal immigrants in an average day, up from 18,000 in July 2006.

The administration’s fiscal 2008 budget proposes funding for an additional 950 detention beds.

Eleanor Stables can be reached at estables@cq.com.