The Online Detainee Locator System 2023

 

The Online Detainee Locator System (ODLS) is a public, online system that allows family members, legal representatives, and members of the general public to locate individuals in immigration detention who have been arrested by the ICE. To use the ODLS system, you can visit http://www.ice.gov/locator.

Previously, the only way to determine a detainee's location was to contact an ICE Detention and Removal Operations Office (DRO). As part of the reform of the detention system, ICE has implemented ODLS so that family members and attorneys can more easily locate detainees online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The system is also available in Spanish, with more languages to come soon.

The Detainee Locator does not search for the data of persons under 18 years of age, to carry out a search in the ODLS in two ways:

More information: https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a5767-Online-Detainee-Locator-System.html

6 Firsthand Stories That Reveal the Problem with Family Detention

 

Written by Atenas Burrola, Pro Bono Manager and Crystal Massey, National Pro Bono Coordinator for the Afghan Project at the American Immigration Council

The Biden administration is reportedly considering reopening family detention. This is horrific news—news that left us in tears. Between the two of us, we dedicated countless hours working and volunteering in what was then the nation’s largest family detention center in Dilley, Texas. During that time, we witnessed firsthand the horrors of family detention and are almost beyond belief that the administration is considering bringing it back.

The 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC) in Dilley, known as “baby jail” or “Dilley” to advocates, opened in early 2015. Its use as a family detention center was ended, ironically, by the Biden administration in 2021. To us, that closure was an important acknowledgement of the inhumanity of family detention. It was a sign that the Biden administration understood that the purported purpose of family detention—deterrence—was cruel and didn’t work. It was a step forward.  More information  https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a5703-Stories-That-Reveal-the-Problem-with-Family-Detention.html 

ICE needs a consistent system of discretionary release from detention

 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) need to establish clear guidance for when ICE should release someone from detention. So far, the Biden administration, like past administrations, has failed to issue this essential guidance. This inaction has left thousands of people needlessly detained.

On October 5, the American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) sent a letter calling on the administration to release such guidance. It is a follow up to an initial letter sent in March.

The number of people trapped in immigration detention has exploded over the past two decades. In 1994, fewer than 7,000 immigrants were detained. In 2019, the population reached a record high of over 50,000 . The population declined significantly in early 2021, due primarily to restrictions at the border and the COVID-19 pandemic, providing the Biden administration an opportunity to permanently downsize ICE detention. Unfortunately, the population has increased by 70% since Biden’s inauguration.

More information https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a5269-ICE-needs-a-consistent-system-of-release.html

ICE will stop arresting and detaining most pregnant and nursing people

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will no longer detain most people who are pregnant, postpartum, or nursing, according to a new policy released on July 9. However, ICE did not commit to a total ban, saying that there will still be “very limited circumstances” that will allow the agency to detain pregnant people.

The move is a clear shift away from the Trump administration, which in 2017 ended the presumption of release for such individuals. In the two years following that change, the rate at which ICE detained pregnant people skyrocketed by 52%, increasing from 1,380 in 2016 to nearly 2,100 pregnant people in 2018.

In announcing the new policy, ICE Director Tae Johnson said the change “reflects our commitment to treat all individuals with respect and dignity while still enforcing our nation’s laws.” ICE’s new policy
 

More information https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a5185-ICE-will-stop-arresting-and-detaining-pregnant.html

Women In ICE Detention Given Hysterectomies Without Their Consent

 

By: Katy Murdza - www.immigrationimpact.com

A whistleblower has come forward to expose serious allegations of medical malpractice at a for-profit U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center in Ocilla, Georgia. The whistleblower—who was until recently employed as a nurse at the Irwin County detention center—worked with several non-governmental organizations to file two complaints with Department of Homeland Security oversight agencies.

The first complaint details the facility’s failure to take COVID-19 precautions and provide adequate medical care. The second contains allegations that women detained at the facility were given hysterectomies—sometimes without their consent—at an unusually high rate.

LaSalle Corrections is a private prison company that the federal government contracts to operate the Irwin County Detention Center that is the subject of the complaint. It operates a total of 18 facilities across the southern United States, which can hold up to 18,000 people collectively.

More information https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4937-Women-in-ICE-Detention-Given-Hysterectomies.html

Federal Court Blocks Error-Prone ICE Deportation Program

By: Emma Winger www.immigrationimpact.com

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested millions of people based on unreliable electronic databases. In a recent court decision with nationwide impact, a federal judge in California ruled that parts of this mass deportation program—called Secure Communities—are unconstitutional.

Through Secure Communities, anyone arrested and fingerprinted for any reason has their fingerprints sent to ICE. ICE runs those fingerprints through certain databases and then, often without any additional investigation, issues a detainer —a request that the federal, state, or local law enforcement agency hold the person for up to 48 hours after they would otherwise be released from custody. This extra time allows ICE to arrest the person. This means that ICE asks state officers to arrest people for deportation based on nothing more than a few clicks on a computer.

In Gonzalez v. ICE, a case brought on behalf of people who are or will be the subject of a detainer issued by an ICE officer in the central region of California, the court found that Secure Communities is fatally flawed. The databases include incomplete, outdated, and incorrect information.

The results are predictable. Countless people have been arrested without adequate cause. For example, from May 2015 to February 2016, ICE asked law enforcement officers to arrest almost 800 people who were either U.S. citizens or otherwise not deportable. The court ruled that ICE violates the U.S. Constitution in two ways when the agency issues a detainer based solely on these faulty databases.

First, ICE is asking state officers to make an arrest without “probable cause” that the person is deportable. Second, in many cases, ICE is asking state officers to do something they aren’t allowed to do—arrest someone for the purpose of deportation. In many states, law enforcement officers are only allowed to arrest a person for a crime.

The court blocked ICE from issuing detainers relying on nothing more than error-prone databases and from making these arrest requests in states where law enforcement officers are not authorized to arrest for deportation.

Though the court’s order applies to ICE agents in California, this includes ICE’s Pacific Enforcement Response Center, which issues detainers across the county when local ICE offices are closed. As a result, the court’s decision is an important check on ICE’s unconstitutional deportation machine.

 

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4533-Federal-Court-Blocks-Error-Prone-ICE-Deportation-Program.html

Chaos And Dysfunction At The Border: Remain In Mexico Program

By Aaron Reichlin-Melnick www.immigrationimpact.com

The first thing many people forcibly returned to Mexico tell you is that they’re afraid. Afraid of the cartels, afraid of Mexican immigration officials, and afraid of the months of uncertainty. This is what they’ve faced since the Trump administration sent them back to Mexico as part of the “Remain in Mexico” program—formally called the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP).

Last week, I visited El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez in Mexico to witness the effects of MPP firsthand. What I saw was chaos, dysfunction, and a policy that has removed what little remaining due process protections existed in immigration court.

Under MPP, individuals who cross the border or arrive at ports of entry are given a notice to appear in immigration court and then sent back to Mexico through a port of entry. Only Mexicans, unaccompanied children, and “vulnerable” individuals are excluded from the program. But that hasn’t stopped U.S. Customs and Border Protection from forcing back extremely pregnant women and vulnerable LGBT+ individuals.

In Ciudad Juárez, those subject to MPP are largely waiting in a network of private and publicly operated shelters. Although some lucky few have managed to obtain jobs and alternate housing, most people subject to MPP will spend the next several months confined to small, crowded spaces because they are too afraid to leave the shelter.

Kidnappings, assaults, rapes, and murders are routine in Ciudad Juárez, and most everyone I talked to had either been victimized themselves or knew someone who had been.

With over 42,000 people sent back across the border under MPP since the program began in January 2019, MPP has rapidly become the most effective tool in the Trump administration’s efforts to stop asylum seekers from coming to the United States. When individuals are sent back under MPP, they are required to wait in Mexico until the date of their next court hearing. This can often take months. I talked to some people in Ciudad Juárez who were sent back in June 2019 and still hadn’t had their first court hearings.

If people survive the wait, they must return to the port of entry on the day of their hearing. They are then taken by armed guards to the nearest immigration court for a hearing.

Those subject to MPP will likely have to go through this process three or four times at a minimum before their case is resolved. Those who are actually able to file for asylum—likely only a small number, given that barely one percent of people subject to MPP have found lawyers—will wait even longer. It will likely take six months to a year for a resolution of their case. Throughout this whole time, they remain vulnerable in Mexico.

When I visited the El Paso immigration court, I was told that more than 15,000 people had been returned to Mexico from the El Paso region alone.

This massive swell of new cases has overwhelmed the small El Paso Immigration Court, which in 2018 saw just 1,464 new cases filed. The court only has four judges, which means that each judge has been assigned thousands of MPP cases.

Despite the small size of the court, judges have been forced to take on hundreds of cases a day. On one of the days I visited the court, a single judge had been assigned 161 cases total on her morning and afternoon dockets. By the end of the day, she had been unable to complete all the cases and was forced to send some people back to Mexico without any movement on their cases.

The sheer size of the MPP docket has also crowded out observers from the El Paso Court. Despite waiting all day at the court, I was told I was not allowed to observe any of the supposedly public hearings. They needed every available seat in the courtroom for individuals subject to MPP. This has plunged the court in El Paso into a state of secrecy, making it virtually impossible to track what’s happening in hearings.

Despite the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe, there is no sign that the Trump administration is planning to reverse course on MPP. In the next few weeks, tents housing MPP “immigration courts” are set to open in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, where tens of thousands of new cases will begin. And until a court or Congress steps in, the chaos, dysfunction, and harm caused by this program will continue.

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4468-Chaos-and-Dysfunction-Remain-in-Mexico-Program.html

Investigation Demanded As Medical Care For Detained Immigrant Children Worsens

By Katy Murdza www.immigrationimpact.com

Border Patrol agents placed a detained 9-year-old girl with a kidney disease at high risk of a urinary tract infection by not allowing her to shower or change her underwear for five days. Agents also denied a 3-year-old medical care after she vomited 10 times in an hour. Agents failed to schedule a doctor’s appointment for a 2-year-old with diarrhea so severe his desperate mother had to change his diaper every 15 minutes. Other Border Patrol agents told a family that no detained children will see a doctor unless they have a fever.

Now, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—Border Patrol’s parent agency—is being held accountable for these and other accounts of inadequate medical care for children held in its custody. The American Immigration Council and American Immigration Lawyers Association filed an administrative complaint on Wednesday with the FBI and two oversight branches of the Department of Homeland Security calling attention to these incidents.

The complaint includes excerpts from firsthand accounts of 200 asylum-seeking mothers about the inadequate care they received while held in CBP facilities. Each mother was later transferred with her child from CBP custody to the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, where their statements were collected.

Taken together, the testimonies show the consistent denial of medical care and unsafe conditions at CBP facilities:

• 67% of mothers stated that their child was not seen at all by a medical provider while in CBP custody, beyond a check for lice.
• 58% of the women who requested medical care for their child reported that they received no medical attention.
• 48% reported being detained with their child for longer than three days, in violation of CBP’s own guidelines.

Parents frequently report sleeping on cement floors for days with 24-hour light and noise. They often say their children’s health deteriorated in CBP custody without access to medical care, while they were forced to remain cold and wet with only thin mylar blankets.

CBP has repeatedly failed to follow even the very low standards that currently regulate its detention conditions.

The 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement requires that any facility holding children be “safe and sanitary,” but 22 years later, the government routinely violates its terms.

In 2017, Federal Judge Dolly Gee determined that the government was violating the agreement by failing to provide children adequate food, water, and basic hygiene items. In August 2019, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld this decision.

In July 2019, DHS’ Office of the Inspector General issued a management alert about “dangerous overcrowding” in the Rio Grande Valley Processing centers. The report revealed inadequate access to showers, changes of clothing, and hot meals. 31% of the children in the inspected facilities were there longer than 72 hours.

The consequence of being held in these substandard conditions can be devastating for children. At least seven immigrant children have died in government custody since last year.

According to Dr. Julie Linton, co-chair of the immigrant health special interest group at the American Academy of Pediatrics:

“Children are not like adults. They get sick more quickly and each hour of delay can be associated with serious complications, especially in cases of infectious diseases. Delays can lead to death.”

As the complaint demands, CBP must improve conditions and medical care in processing facilities. CBP agents who interact with children need to have child welfare experience. They should be trained to screen for medical issues and refer children to medical experts. Finally, all children should be released as quickly as possible, with an absolute maximum of 72 hours in CBP custody.

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4453-Detained-Immigrant-Children-Worsens.html

ICE Manipulate The Appropriations Process To Increase The Incarceration Of Immigrants

By Jorge Loweree www.immigrationimpact.com

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently notified Congress of its intent to pull $271 million dollars from FEMA, the Coast Guard, and TSA for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

DHS will use this money to increase immigration detention capacity and construct tent courthouses along the Texas border. The department is going through with this reallocation of funds despite Congress’ objections and ICE’s dismal record of caring for people already held in its custody.

This reallocation was made under the government funding bill that President Trump signed into law in January 2019, ending the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

When that bill passed, ICE was holding approximately 49,000 people in detention centers across the country. That was a record at the time. Appropriators in Congress explicitly instructed DHS to decrease detention levels to an average of 40,500 by the end of the fiscal year.

ICE successfully ignored the will of Congress, however, as the agency was reportedly holding an all-time high of 52,398 people in custody as of May. The agency is now projecting an average detainee population of 49,661 by the end of the fiscal year. DHS claims that the additional $271 million is necessary to deal with a rise in single adults crossing the southern border. The department is making this claim despite the fact that their own numbers indicate a significant decline in apprehensions across all demographics over the past five months.

This is not the first time the administration has pulled funds from various parts of the federal government in pursuit of its immigration enforcement priorities. President Trump declared a national emergency earlier this year to reallocate over $6 billion from the Departments of Defense and Treasury to pay for a border wall.

DHS similarly reprogrammed $200 million in 2018. This year, the reprogrammed funds will be pulled from several agencies within DHS, including FEMA, the Coast Guard, and TSA. $116 million will be reprogrammed to pay for ICE enforcement activities, including the addition of 9,000 detention beds across the country.

ICE is therefore continuing to increase its detention capacity at a time when numerous investigations by government and non-governmental organizations have made it clear that the agency is incapable of properly caring for people in its custody.

The administration has repeatedly claimed that detention is necessary to ensure that people appear for their hearings, but the reality is that immigrants and their families appear in court in high numbers. Meaningful alternatives to detention that allow people to navigate our immigration system in less punitive settings, while also ensuring that they appear in court, exist and should be used more broadly.

DHS will also pull $155 million from the FEMA Disaster Relief Fund for the creation of temporary tent courts for people who were subjected to the “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially named the Migrant Protection Protocols. This program requires asylum seekers who arrive at the southern border to await their immigration court hearings in Mexico. Immigration judges from other parts of the country will soon begin to issue decisions in hundreds of asylum cases per day in these courts by video, raising serious due process concerns.

It is also unclear how DHS can legally allocate money for the creation of these facilities given that immigration courts are part of the Department of Justice.

Congress will soon have an opportunity to revisit this issue as it debates DHS funding for FY 2020. Legislators should consider implementing a cap on immigration detention in order to prevent ICE’s manipulation of the appropriations process in the future.

 

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4444-money-to-increase-the-incarceration-of-immigrants.html

US Citizens Caught In Immigration Dragnet As Enforcement Gets More Aggressive

 

By Walter Ewing

There is a disturbing trend in aggressive immigration enforcement that is appearing more and more recently: the detention of U.S. citizens. There are clear indications that U.S. immigration agents are locking up people they assume must be non-citizens, but who are in fact U.S. citizens.

These abuses transcend any presidential administration. But there are indications that the Trump administration has been particularly aggressive in detaining and then challenging U.S.-born individuals about their citizenship status. According to a report released in July that analyzes ICE enforcement data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), there has been a striking increase in the number of U.S. citizens “encountered” by ICE during the Trump years. 

In the first year after President Trump took office, ICE encountered 27,540 U.S. citizens. In comparison, during the last year of the Obama administration, ICE encountered 5,940 U.S. citizens. This trend suggests that some U.S. citizens who may “appear deportable” in the eyes of some U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have become increasingly vulnerable to immigration enforcement in recent years. 

Consider three recent examples: 

• In March 2019, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers detained a 9-year-old girl who is a U.S. citizen for 32 hours without her parents present. The girl lives in Tijuana and crosses the border every day to get to and from school in the United States. On this particular day, a CBP officer decided that she didn’t resemble the photo in her passport and detained her. Why it took nearly a day and a half to verify her U.S. citizenship and release her is unclear.
• Throughout June and July 2019, an 18-year-old U.S.-citizen was detained for 23 days by CBP. He wasn’t given a chance to show officials his U.S. birth certificate until he was transferred to ICE custody—although even that didn’t immediately get him out of detention. He described conditions in the CBP facility as so bad that he considered allowing himself to be deported to Mexico just to get out.
• A Marine veteran with PTSD was held by ICE for three days in Michigan in December 2018. He was briefly being held in jail for an altercation at a hospital when ICE requested that he be turned over to them for removal from the country.

Incidents such as this are not limited to the Trump administration. For instance, a U.S. citizen in New York was detained by ICE for two years beginning in 2016. He was being held in jail for a drug offense and, on the day of his release, was incorrectly informed that he was not a U.S. citizen and therefore subject to deportation. It is mind-boggling that it took officials two years to figure out he was a citizen. 

There are many reasons to be critical of over-zealous immigration enforcement in the United States—such as the fact that enforcement is focused on non-violent individuals with no criminal records or relatively minor records. However, locking up U.S. citizens takes over-zealousness to a whole new level. 

Source: http://www.immigrationimpact.com
https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4370-US-Citizens-Caught-in-Immigration.html

The Institutional Hearing Program (IHP): An Overview

The Institutional Hearing Program (IHP) permits immigration judges to conduct removal proceedings for noncitizens serving criminal sentences in certain correctional facilities. Unfortunately, there is little reliable, publicly accessible information about how the IHP functions. Lack of information notwithstanding, a readily apparent problem with the IHP is that most noncitizens do not have access to attorneys who can represent them in their deportation hearings. Typically, these individuals fare much worse than those with an attorney. 

This fact sheet provides an overview of the IHP’s history and what is known about the way it works. It also highlights some of the due process concerns that surround the program. 


History and Overview of the Institutional Hearing Program 

The Institutional Hearing Program (also known as the Institutional Removal Program) was created in 1988 to identify deportable noncitizens who have been convicted of criminal offenses and initiate removal proceedings against them before they are released from federal, state, or local custody. The creation of the program followed enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which stated that: “In the case of an alien who is convicted of an offense which makes the alien subject to deportation, the Attorney General shall begin any deportation proceeding as expeditiously as possible after the date of the conviction.” 

The publicly available information about the IHP and its scope is incomplete. According to a 2004 consultant’s report prepared at the request of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the IHP operates in “federal, state, and local jails and prisons.” But a 2012 report from the Congressional Research Service states that—at least initially—the IHP “focused on a small number of federal and state prisons that held the largest number of criminal aliens,” while a separate Alien Criminal Apprehension Program (ACAP) “covered other jails and prisons.” Yet a 2017 Department of Justice (DOJ) press release announcing the expansion of the IHP references only “federal correctional facilities.” DOJ also states that, at the federal level, the program is jointly administered by the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) and the Bureau of Prisons (BOP), both within DOJ, together with ICE, which is within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

The number of removals conducted through the IHP grew dramatically for several years after the program’s creation, starting at 1,409 in Fiscal Year (FY) 1988 and peaking at 18,018 in FY 1997. However, IHP removals plummeted after the enactment of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRAIRA). IIRAIRA, along with the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, added to the list of offenses for which a noncitizen could be deported; it also made it easier to carry out deportations without a court hearing. As a result, the number of removals conducted through the IHP dropped rapidly after FY 1997. 

The Trump administration is seeking to breathe new life into the IHP. On February 20, 2017, then acting Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly issued the department-wide memorandum “Enforcement of the Immigration Laws to Serve the National Interest.” The memorandum reaffirms the U.S. government’s commitment to utilize the IHP to initiate removal proceedings against noncitizens “incarcerated in federal, state, and local correctional facilities.” 

Roughly one month after the memorandum was issued, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the IHP would expand in federal prisons to a total of 14 BOP facilities and six BOP contract facilities. DOJ gave no indication of how many federal prisons were participating in the IHP prior to the expansion. 


How the Program Works

The IHP—which is part of the Criminal Alien Program (CAP)—commences when designated ICE officers identify noncitizens serving criminal sentences. ICE then makes its own determination regarding whether these noncitizens have committed an offense that constitutes a ground for deportation (or whether the noncitizen is otherwise deportable). 

If the officer determines that the noncitizen is indeed deportable and can have his or her case heard before an immigration judge, rather than face summary removal under the scheme enacted in IIRAIRA, ICE files a “Notice to Appear (NTA)” with EOIR that charges the noncitizen with committing a deportable offense and initiates removal proceedings. Once ICE files the NTA with EOIR, removal proceedings ensue, according to the statute. EOIR schedules an initial hearing before an immigration judge and the noncitizen is notified. The immigration judge reviews the charges and if the judge determines that the noncitizen is in fact deportable, the judge will determine whether the noncitizen qualifies for any relief from removal. 

During a hearing on any application for relief from removal, a noncitizen has the right to submit evidence, review the government’s evidence, and call witnesses. Importantly, a noncitizen has a right to counsel, though the statute specifies that this right is “at no expense to the government.” The judge then issues a final decision. If the judge orders removal, a “final order of deportation” is served on the noncitizen (see Figure 1). 

As with all removal orders issued through this process, a noncitizen has a right to appeal the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) and, in many cases, can seek judicial review before the federal courts of appeals. 


 

Due Process Concerns

A key problem with the IHP is that most noncitizens lack access to attorneys who can represent them in their deportation hearings. A national study of access to counsel in immigration courts found that only 9 percent of incarcerated noncitizens in IHP removal proceedings between 2007 and 2012 were represented by an attorney, compared to 38 percent of non-IHP removal cases. 

Not surprisingly, individuals in removal proceedings who do not have an attorney fare much worse than those with an attorney. The same study found that, in general, only 2 percent of detained noncitizens without attorneys achieved favorable outcomes in their cases, compared to 21 percent of those with attorneys. 

At the federal level, the Justice Department reports that only four percent of the IHP cases completed in FY 2018 had representation. Among cases without representation, 97 percent culminated in an order of removal, compared to 72 percent of cases with representation. As the Supreme Court has noted, discerning the immigration consequences of criminal convictions is “quite complex.” Thus, the importance of counsel is particularly acute for individuals who appear on the IHP immigration court docket. 

In addition to the problem of access to counsel, the manner in which many IHP deportation hearings are conducted raises other due process concerns. Increasingly, immigration judges conduct the hearings by video teleconference (VTC) rather than in person. According to the Justice Department, 54 percent of federal IHP case hearings were conducted by VTC in FY 2018. 

The Trump administration wants to increase the use of VTC proceedings as part of its effort to expand and modernize the IHP. However, a study conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton at the behest of EOIR found that “faulty VTC equipment, especially issues associated with poor video and sound quality, can disrupt cases to the point that due process issues may arise.” Moreover, the study noted that “it is difficult for judges to analyze eye contact, nonverbal forms of communication, and body language over VTC.” 

In other words, noncitizens subject to VTC hearings are at a distinct disadvantage compared to those who appear before a judge in person. While the immigration statute permits that hearings be conducted by VTC, courts have reiterated that these proceedings must nonetheless comport with due process, particularly with regard to the rights to counsel and to examine evidence. 

Source: www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4354-Institutional-Hearing-Program.html

No Freedom, Education, Or Privacy: Over 2,000 Immigrant Children Detained

By Melissa Cruz

Over 2,000 immigrant children are being detained by the Trump administration at a “temporary emergency” facility in Homestead, Florida. All of the children at the facility have been designated by the government as “unaccompanied” minors. However, not every “unaccompanied” child came to the border alone—some were intentionally separated from their guardians by U.S. officials.

Under normal procedures, children are supposed to be transferred from temporary facilities to the care and custody of permanent, state-licensed Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) shelters within 20 days. Instead, many children have been detained at this “temporary shelter” for months at a time. The average length of stay has fluctuated between 64 and 89 days in recent months. 

Why are children being detained at Homestead for so long? One significant factor is that it’s harder for immigrant family members to get custody of their children due to several policy changes implemented under the Trump administration. 

Most of the children have “sponsors”—parents or immediate family members already in the United States—who are waiting to take them into their custody. But the administration has made the sponsoring process even more difficult, often using it to arrest and ultimately deport family members that come forward. This information-sharing with immigration enforcement, which ORR agreed to scale back after outcry, has forced children at Homestead to languish in shelters for longer periods of time. The conditions at Homestead—whether the stay is one week or one month—are not suitable for children. A research team from Amnesty International toured the facility in April 2019, and in a damning report, revealed how Homestead compromises the safety and well-being of the children in its custody. 

As of April 2, 2019—the date of Amnesty International’s inspection—Homestead housed children ranging from 13- to 17-years-old. Around 75 percent were boys and 25 percent were girls. Most fled from dangerous conditions in Central American countries. 

Amnesty International reports that Homestead looks and feels like an “industrial-scale facility” and is made up of “…brick and mortar buildings; metal shipping containers converted into offices for legal and other services and administration; and soft-sided structures.” 

Children are housed in two campuses. The South Campus houses 13- to 16-year-olds and the North Campus holds 17-year-olds. 

At the South Campus, there are 144 beds per floor. There are 12 children per room. They sleep in bunk beds and only have one shower and one toilet for the group, with no privacy. The North Campus—where the 17-year-old children are detained—is a former military vocational building. It has eight “bays” filled with bunk beds; each bay houses around 144 children. There are 30 only showers and a row of toilets in each bay. 

The children have highly restrictive schedules. In contrast to other ORR facilities, the children at Homestead begin their days at 6:30 a.m. and end at 10:00 p.m., with only one hour and 50 minutes of free time for recreation. They spend most of their days indoors and must wear identifying bar codes at all times. At permanent shelters, children are allowed more outside time. 

Their access to resources is limited. For instance, staff members said that girls must submit a service form request if they need sanitary pads. 

Other required services—such as the ability to safely disclose allegations of sexual abuse within the facility—are woefully inadequate. There have been at least six allegations of sexual abuse made by children since the facility opened in 2018, at least two of which involved staff members. Children can use pre-programmed telephones in the facility to report abuse. But those telephones are in an open-air cubicle in a recreation space—just five feet away from a ping pong table. 

In interviews, children who had stayed at Homestead said the education they received was poor. During Amnesty International’s visit, for instance, students were copying out the words of the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance in a math class. 

The facility does not hire certified teachers like permanent ORR shelters. Homestead also does not follow the Miami-Dade County public school curriculum and instead relies on teaching developed by its for-profit, private contractor. 

Amnesty International concluded that the Trump administration allows Homestead to defy these legal standards of care by designating it a “temporary” shelter instead of a permanent one, even though some children are detained there for close to a year. No child should be forced to live like this. The administration is ignoring what is in the best interests of these children by housing them in prison-like conditions. 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4351-Over-2000-Immigrant-Children-Detained.html