Immigration and Crime: Detention

Jay Shackley
The United States current practice of detaining incoming immigrants pending their

hearings first began as a stopgap measure in response to the massive migrant wave coming from

Hatia and Cuba, under president Jimmy Carter. This policy was then widened under president

Reagan, as he dealt with people fleeing civil wars and violence in Central America. Detention

evolved from this stopgap measure and into the way things were done, as the Reagan

administration expanded immigration authority to help fight growing drug crime; while this is on

paper an admirable goal, it was used to push anti-immigrant sentiment and deport and detain

thousands of people. As focus shifted to catching people running across the border with Mexico,

this situation would only get worse.

Private companies, smelling an opportunity, moved in to catch lucrative government

contracts to operate detention centers for profit. The government and ICE pay these companies

millions, with ICE’s own detention budget growing to exceed three million dollars in 2018. The

1996 IIRIRA act threw fuel on the fire, making detention mandatory for certain offenses; the list

of offenses was later expanded. And finally, 9/11 destroyed all efforts to repeal these laws and

reduce detention, spawning an increased push for border security, and the end of “Catch and

Release” under president Bush.

In recent years, while the total number of immigrants and arrests has decreased slightly,

President Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric has given rise to more and more detention. Zero

Tolerance, the process of criminally charging all illegal immigrants, and separating children from

their families as they attempt to seek asylum. Many facilities cannot properly hold the number of

people they are being assigned, and leave the asylum-seekers in tightly packed cages, denied

basic hygiene and care.

 Personally, this article has filled me with a deep sense of shame and disappointment in

the government and its policies. Initially, there was justification for the detainment; the INS just

didn’t have the facilities to process the massive influx of migrants in the early 70’s, so they set

up some basic camps to hold people for a few days. That’s fine. But what the system has evolved

into today, the large-scale prison complexes and the fact that 70% of them are for-profit private

institutions is just absurd and bloated. Billions of dollars going into a practice that isn’t even

necessary is absurd; you could easily funnel that money into asylum facilities or migrant

education programs or things that aren’t paying companies to keep children in cages.

The reasoning behind the initial expansion of detention practices was rooted in fear and

prejudice, and it is maintained today for similar reasons. The Reagan administration used the fear

of communist expansion to hold and deport mass quantities of immigrants fleeing civil wars in

communist countries; given that many of these civil wars were sponsored by the US government,

to turn these people away, often sending them into real danger, seems incredibly ethically

questionable and certainly unsympathetic. After this, they turned to the old standard argument as

the “War on Drugs” erupted; immigrants are criminals, immigrants are bringing drugs, our

border is undefended, the same arguments that we’ve talked about and explained in class.over

and over again. While some criminals are obviously going to get through, the vast majority of

immigrants are just going to be people, and will usually be much less likely to commit crimes

than their native counterparts. The 1996 “aggravated felony” act and rising deportations are just

part of the ever-increasing immorality of US immigration control.

9/11 gutting efforts to repeal the mandatory detention laws is just a slap in the face.

Instead of lessening the flood of migrants going into federal detention for increasing sentences,

suddenly you have migrants being detained for drug crime ​and​ “terrorism”, even though illegal
immigrants and asylum seekers are practically unheard of. The number of known terrorist

incidents caused by illegal immigrants from 1975 to 2017 is zero. [1] Moving on, I think Catch

and Release was a very reasonable policy. You don’t have the resources to hold all migrants, so

you briefly detain them, give them their court date, and let them get their lives together. Of

course, some of them are going to just run for it, but you can’t stop that, and there are ​better

methods to curb undocmented immigrants than catching them all immediately. I have no doubt

more of them would show up for their court dates if they knew when they were. It’s absurd that

ICE doesn’t do a good job informing immigrants of the process, and then turns around and uses

it as an excuse to detain more people in horrible conditions.

The Frontline documentary on El Paso ties neatly into what immigrant detention has

become under the Trump administration. The rhetoric, the ever-expanding ICE facilities, and of

course the “Zero Tolerance” policy that has resulted in the very publicized separation of children

from their families and the overcapacity detention centers. It just leaves me feeling so frustrated.

What’s the point of it all? It doesn’t deter migrants. It reflects poorly on the country. It’s

expensive. I’m not an expert on U.S. law, the political climate of our borders, and a dozen other

things that make me less-than-qualified here, but detention can’t be the solution here. It’s just

inhumane.
Sources:

Nowrasteh, Alex. ​Terrorists by Immigration Status and Nationality: A Risk Analysis,

1975–2017​. 16 July 2020,

www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/terrorists-immigration-status-nationality-risk-an

alysis-1975-2017.