Immigration Detention

Lost in Detention Gives Attention to Immigrant Detention and S-Comm but Lacks Alternatives

1:04 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Justice|Media|Politics|Secure Communities · Comments Off

19 Oct 2011

As Bianca posted yesterday, last night PBS’s Frontline featured Lost in Detention with Maria Hinojosa. The hour long investigative show looked at the immigration detention policies that have expanded under the Obama administration, specifically the impact of Secure Communities and the abuses in the ever expanding immigration jail industry.

I watched the special report last night and sadly wasn’t surprised by anything presented. The issue of how the Obama administration has focused on increasing deportations, using programs like Secure Communities, is one we have covered for years. I expect though that this program exposed how the current immigration policy is tearing apart families and leading to physical and sexual abuse inside the big business of detention centers to a new audience.

One of the disappointments I was left with after watching Lost in Detention was the way the show seemed to serve as a mic for the excuses given by the Obama administration for the terror it’s policies create. The answer that seemed to be given by Hinojosa for the question “what can be done to stop the deportations and growth of abuses?” was Comprehensive Immigration Reform. There were snippets of speeches by Obama and an interview with the administration’s vendecomunidad Latina spokesmodel Cecilia Muñoz. Some choice quotes from Muñoz:

“even broken laws have to be enforced.”

“as long as congress gives us $ to deport 400,000. That’s what we’re going to do.”

NYT Puts the Responsibility on the Community for Keeping Tabs on Immigrant Detainees’ Deaths.

1:16 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Immigration|Newspapers · Comments Off

9 May 2008

The New York Times recently ran a story about how it tried and was trying to find out information about immigrant deaths in detention.

The document that follows, “Detainee Deaths 2004-November 2007,” is the government’s fullest account to date of deaths in immigration detention. Compiled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and obtained by The New York Times under the Freedom of Information Act, it lists the names of 66 people who died, their dates of birth and death, where they were last held, where they died and the cause of death.
But errors and omissions on the list made it difficult for The Times to confirm the identities of many whose deaths had not previously come to public attention, to find out why they died, or to locate relatives.
Along with 13 deaths cited as suicides, 14 as the result of various cardiac ailments and 9 related to H.I.V. and AIDS, the list includes cryptic causes of death like “unresponsive” and “undetermined. ” The list does not mention the immigrants’ nationalities or where they lived in the United States. Some names and birth dates appear garbled.

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Posts Tagged ‘immigration detention’

Lost in Detention Gives Attention to Immigrant Detention and S-Comm but Lacks Alternatives

NYT Puts the Responsibility on the Community for Keeping Tabs on Immigrant Detainees’ Deaths.

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