WELCOME TO FRANZ KAFKA’S AMERICA: Where Individuals Are Imprisoned Indefinitely In Substandard Conditions Without Trial For The “Crime” Of Asking For Protection Under Our Legal Process — The Objective: Coerce Them To Stop Asking For The Benefits Our Law Offers & Demoralize Them To The Point Where They Would Rather Be Killed Or Tortured Than To Proceed With Their Legal Cases!

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Professor Stacy Burstin writes in USA Today:

I toured an immigration detention center. The prison-like atmosphere was mind-numbing.

Immigration detention is supposed to be a temporary stop — not an endless jail sentence with the goal of causing migrants to self-deport.

4:00 am EDT May. 16, 2019

Immigration detention is supposed to be a temporary stop, not a prison. But what else can one call a place with razor wire covered fences, holding cells, head counts, locked dormitories, solitary confinement, limited recreation, inadequate mental health services and no-contact visits?

While visiting the New Mexico border area as volunteers with Catholic Charities Immigration Legal Services of Southern New Mexico in March, a group of undergraduates, three law students, a campus minister and I toured the Otero County Processing Center. Management & Training Corp. (MTC) runs the facility for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement service.

A smiling ICE officer greeted us at the start of our visit, explaining that ICE likes giving tours of Otero to dispel criticisms circulating about immigration detention.

Inside an immigration detention center

Our first stop was the count room dominated by a large board covered with more than 900 colored tags on hooks — mostly blue and orange — representing the detainee population and designating the level of security and privileges afforded based on jumpsuit color. “Blues” have no known criminal history and simply entered the United States without papers. “Oranges” are divided into two groups — individuals who have a history of very minor crimes such as public intoxication, and those arrested for or convicted of other nonviolent crimes. “Reds” have arrests, convictions or other history involving violent activity.

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In the intake area, we found newly arrived men lingering in a large holding cell behind a locked, metal door waiting to be processed. A security officer explained the intake procedure, but it was hard for me to focus on his words because I couldn’t take my eyes off the mountain of duffel bags and backpacks full of their belongings piled next to a shower room. I later learned that same image haunted my students.

We passed through the medical unit where individuals receive basic medical care. Those with more serious conditions, we were told, are sent outside of the facility. Our guides told us that a psychiatrist visits once a month to oversee medication, and one full-time counselor is available for the 900 or more detainees. There is a small room where detainees deemed suicidal are watched.

Our guides also brought us into one of the dorms — locked housing where 50 men sleep on thin mattresses in rows of bunk beds. I was overcome with a sense of time standing still; boredom pervaded the room. Despite MTC’s commitment to “provide an atmosphere that is comfortable, safe, and conducive to making time pass quickly for those who find themselves in our care,” individuals are limited to two hours of recreation a day.

One of the students asked whether English classes are offered. Our guide replied that they are working on it, that such programs have not been instituted because those at Otero only stay for six to eight weeks. But we met detainees who reported being there for six to eight months or more.

The blues and oranges able to secure a job in the facility (only four of the 50 men in the dorm we visited were working at the time) earn at least $1 a day, the ICE-stipulated minimum wage. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the detainees we saw raking the grounds, mopping hallways, doing laundry or preparing food allowed MTC to meet its labor needs without actually paying for them.

A glimpse through a narrow window revealed the Secured Housing Unit — the solitary confinement block — a row of small cells where individuals causing problems are sent. Men who are vulnerable to bullying or abuse (including transgender women) can also request a move here for protection, though they would have to be pretty desperate to do so.

Immigrants need asylum, not imprisonment

Facilities like Otero are not supposed to be prisons. Most ICE detainees have not been convicted of any crime. For many others, they are detained even though a U.S. court had dismissed charges, authorized release while awaiting trial, or convicted and imposed a minimal sentence already served.

None of these men belong in jail.

Yet the realization that we were in a jail only intensified at our last stop — the visiting area. We found a large glass window running the length of a long table, seats placed on either side. Detainees are kept separate from loved ones and communicate by phone.

Immigration detention is supposed to be a temporary stop for individuals seeking a determination of whether they have a legal basis for staying in the United States. Yet many at Otero are eligible to apply for asylum and other forms of humanitarian protection.

Why are U.S. taxpayers paying a private company to provide housing, food and 24/7 security for individuals, the majority of whom pose no security threat and have a right under U.S. law to seek protection?

Why are these men consigned to live in a mind-numbing, prison-like atmosphere that leads many — in Otero and similar facilities around the country — to become so desperate to get out that they abandon valid claims and self-deport?

Unfortunately, my students and I came to the troubling conclusion that this desperation is not just the inevitable result of immigration confinement, but may actually be the goal in the first place.

Stacy Brustin, professor of law, is director of the Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Clinic at The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law in Washington, D.C.

You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com.

4:00 am EDT May. 16, 2019

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In the final “Kafkaesque” twist, perhaps Trump’s “maliciously incompetent” immigration policies will simply convince individuals needing refuge that our legal system is as worthless and dishonest as the ones they are leaving behind.

For the right price and degree of risk (and refugees are by nature risk takers) smugglers will be able to eventually get persistent individuals to the interior. There, as I have pointed out, their chances of avoiding forced removal will be much better than their odds of getting asylum in an unfairly biased, increasingly lawless system that uses illegal coercive methods and is stacked against their claims, no matter how valid or compelling.

Right now these folks are NOT a security risk, no matter what lies Trump and the restrictionists spread. A smart, humane, competent, and law-abiding Administration would simply encourage them to arrive at ports of entry, promptly screen them, apply the asylum laws in the generous way that they were intended, integrate those granted (probably the majority, under a fair, generous application of the law, in accordance with Cardoza-Fonseca) into our society, and return those who do not qualify after full due process in a humane and dignified manner.

Why would folks cross the border between ports of entry to turn themselves in to the Border Patrol if they could present themselves at a border port and be treated promptly, humanely, and fairly? That’s what would actually give us a secure border as well as many grateful, productive new residents who will help the U.S. It would also promptly separate out those who clearly can’t qualify for protection before they establish ties to the U.S.

With a smarter, common-sense approach to the Immigration Courts, universal access to counsel, and better, more professional, judges who were actually well-trained in recognizing and granting meritorious asylum cases (and not expected to function as a “Border Patrol junior auxiliary”), asylum cases could be completed in compliance with full Due Process in months, rather than years. The Border Patrol could go back to real law enforcement, which they are largely ignoring right now in a rush to do Trump’s bidding.

Instead, Trump seems determined to create a situation where many will die, smugglers will get richer, but more individuals will get to the interior where they will live, unscreened and perhaps exploited, but alive, as part of a growing “underground” or “immigration black market.” The Border Patrol won’t even be able to count them or “arrest” (arguably an inappropriate term for
“turn ins”) them as they do now to support their bogus claims of  a “law enforcement emergency.” This self-created “emergency” — actually a humanitarian tragedy —has little to do with legitimate law enforcement. How maliciously incompetent can one Administration get?

And, no, “Trump’s Big Beautiful Wall” won’t stop professional smugglers! They are already laughing at his ineptness and anxiously waiting to see how his next nativist-driven dumb policy will improve their business and fill their coffers. The dumbest smuggler is probably smarter than Trump, and much less dangerous to America.

PWS

05-17-19