NEW exclusive from @georgejoseph94 and me — In the rush to incarcerate as many immigrants as possible, ICE is putting civil immigration detainees into general population units in federal prison, creating a wildly dangerous and cruel situation. theappeal.org/exclusive-immi…
This is a really interesting bit of fallout from California's "sanctuary" laws. Because ICE can't create new contracts with county jails in the state to house detainees, it had to turn to federal prisons, which are ill-equipped to deal with a civil immigrant detainee population.
So instead of just offering bond to immigrant detainees as they await their asylum determinations or removal proceedings, ICE is cramming them into federal prisons, which have already faced serious staffing cuts and have received no extra funding to house this population.
On top of that, immigrants have been unable to see their lawyers, due to BOP restrictions on who has access to prisons. ICE told us that it had set up a meeting for detainees with lawyers in Portland this week, but canceled it after protests blocked the entrance to their office.
U.S. marshals, who are responsible for immigrants being charged with crimes for crossing the border, have been able to house them in county jails, because California's sanctuary laws only bar cooperation with civil immigration enforcement, not criminal.
In brief, the ways that "zero-tolerance" quickly created a cascading effect through all areas of confinement in the southwest and west coast in general, has amplified the worst aspects of an already needlessly cruel and under-supervised prison system.
Which is going to eventually lead us to two false choices — either letting cruel and inhumane conditions continue in these prisons, or build an even more massive private immigration detention infrastructure. The right answer, of course, is we just stop prosecuting these cases.
So who's going to step up and forcefully make that argument? Anyone who isn't is wasting your time.
