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 Announces New Victim-Centered Policy, Showing a Favorable Shift Toward Vulnerable Immigrants

 

By Kate Goettel - www.immigrationimpact.com/

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced this week a new policy designed to honor and protect vulnerable immigrants. The new policy addresses protections for survivors of violence, trafficking, and domestic abuse. Issued on August 11, the policy states that ICE will exercise prosecutorial discretion “to facilitate access to justice and victim-based immigration benefits by noncitizen crime victims.” Among other things, ICE will refrain from enforcement actions, absent exceptional circumstances, until U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) makes a final or interim decision on an application for immigration benefits.

Importantly, the memo defines “enforcement actions” broadly to constrain ICE, in most circumstances, from taking the following actions against individuals with pending applications for victim-based protections:

• Issuing detainers.
• Issuing a Notice to Appear, the charging document in immigration court proceedings.
• Stopping, questioning, or arresting an individual.
• Detention.
• Executing a removal order; i.e., deportation from the United States.

The new policy also constrains ICE from taking enforcement actions during a pending criminal investigation or prosecution...

More information  https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a5215-ICE-Announces-New-Victim-Centered-Policy.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

Immigration Agencies’ Intrusive Searches Of Cell Phones, Laptops Are Ruled Unconstitutional

By Emma Winger

A federal court ruled this week that sweeping policies permitting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to search personal cell phones, laptops, and other electronic devices without reasonable suspicion are unconstitutional.

The policies that the court rejected authorized CBP and ICE officers to search the contents of electronic devices of people arriving at U.S. borders, including U.S. airports, without reasonable suspicion that those devices might have evidence of illegal activity and without a court order. Immigration officers could randomly search the cell phones and laptops of anyone arriving in the United States, including U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents.

In Alasaad v. McAleenan, ten U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident challenged these policies, arguing, in part, that they violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. On Tuesday, the court agreed.

More information...

 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4626-search-the-cell-phones-and-laptops-of-anyone-arriving.html

 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

USCIS Proposes Increased Fees For All Immigration-Related Applications

By Aaron Reichlin-Melnick

In a new proposal officially put forward on Thursday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) called for major fee hikes for immigration-related applications.

The cost for becoming a citizen would rise above $1,000 for the first time in history. In another first, USCIS proposed a new fee for asylum seekers, which would make the United States only the fourth country in the world to charge for humanitarian protection. Advocates decried the fee increases as an attack on legal immigration.

Under the proposed fees, an applicant for a green card through marriage who was applying from inside the United States would have to pay $2,750 in total. This is a $990 increase from the previous costs.

Applicants for citizenship would also pay over 60% more, with the total fees increasing from $725 to $1,170.

USCIS also plans to abolish fee waivers for a wide variety of applications, including for naturalization.

Currently, nearly 40% of applicants for citizenship receive a fee waiver, making this a significant change that could hit seniors and low-income immigrants the hardest. Under the agency’s plan, only fee waivers required by law would be allowed, with all other fee waivers abolished.

Some groups will be particularly impacted, including crime and trafficking victims seeking U visas or T visas. Individuals seeking these visas often need to file Form I-192, which allows them to officially reenter the United States on the new visa. The current fee is $930, for which a fee waiver is available.

Under the new proposal, the fee would increase to $1,415 and no fee waivers would be available. This could mean that victims of trafficking would be unable to afford the visa allowing them to stay in the United States, even though they were otherwise eligible to receive it.

USCIS also proposes to charge people $50 to ask for asylum, which the agency says will discourage “frivolous filings.” Currently, only Iran, Fiji, and Australia charge a fee for asylum seekers. The $50 fee would likely prove prohibitive to people seeking asylum—who are not legally allowed to work in the United States until after applying for asylum.

A $50 fee for applying for asylum would also have devastating effects on asylum seekers in detention, who earn at most $1 a day through Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s so-called “voluntary work program.”

Because fees set by USCIS apply automatically to applicants in immigration court, it would take a new regulation in the immigration court system to exempt detained asylum seekers. USCIS also proposes to hike fees an additional 6% across the board, and then send $200,000,000 yearly to ICE to use however that agency wishes. In essence, they would be forcing immigrants to pay extra in order to detain and deport other immigrants. However, the agency acknowledges that it may need congressional approval in order to do this.

Taken as a whole, these changes would make it more expensive to legally immigrate, imposing significant burdens on low-income immigrants in particular. The agency is soliciting comments on the new fees, with the comment period set to end on December 16, and opposition to the rule is likely to be strong.

Given the significant impact of theses changes, if the agency moves forward with its plan it’s likely to face opposition in court.

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4620-USCIS-Proposes-Increased-Fees.html

Immigrants Waiting For Their Immigration Records Can Now Challenge Agency Delay

By Emily Creighton www.immigrationimpact.com

A federal court in San Francisco certified two nationwide classes of immigrants and attorneys challenging extreme agency delays in producing immigration case files.

Plaintiffs allege that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have a system-wide practice of failing to provide access to immigration case records—called A-Files—within deadlines set by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Without these files, immigrants and their attorneys are at a severe disadvantage in moving forward with their cases.

The court’s decision on Tuesday allows the case to proceed on behalf of all noncitizens and attorneys with delayed FOIA requests, and not simply on behalf of the five individuals who filed the lawsuit.

At the end of Fiscal Year 2018, USCIS reported a backlog of 41,320 pending requests. This means that tens of thousands of individuals did not receive a determination on their A-File FOIA requests within the time period required by law. USCIS admitted that 98% of the FOIA requests that it receives—which would include all the cases in the backlog—are requests for A-Files.

The decision also is significant because this is the first time a court has certified a class in a lawsuit alleging a pattern and practice of violating FOIA.

The Court granted class certification because the problem is widespread. Individuals nationwide experience significant delays in obtaining their immigration records—delays that ultimately harm their cases. By granting class certification, the court could guarantee that all class members receive timely determinations on their FOIA requests.

The attorneys in the case often described the “legal limbo” their clients were forced into. While waiting for the A-Files, their clients could not move on with their immigration cases or, consequently, their lives.

As the Court noted, by summarizing the statements by impacted attorneys, delayed responses to FOIA requests result in, among other things:

“Risk of deportation,” “longer detention time,” “prolonged family separation for clients who have to wait longer for their naturalization cases to be approved in order to file ‘immediate relative’ visa petitions,” “the inability to travel to visit sick family because of risks associated with re-entry while cases are still pending,” and “loss of access to public assistance such as Social Security Income and housing without proof of immigration status.”

The Court focused on the inherent unfairness of a system where immigration agencies push for speedy resolution of immigration cases, but delay access to FOIA records so noncitizens are prevented from fully participating in their own cases:

“The irony should not be lost on anyone that the agencies that are delaying noncitizens’ right to timely obtain copies of their A-Files are the same agencies pushing to accelerate proceedings in immigration cases. Recent immigration policy changes now encourage immigration judges to limit continuances and mandate that asylum application must be resolved within 180 days, detained cases within 60 days, and non-detained cases within one year.”

Rejecting the government’s argument that all FOIA cases are different and so the harm to these individuals can’t be the same, the Court pointed to the delay itself as the injury shared by all members of the class. This delay in responding to the FOIA requests, the Court said, was the “glue” that holds the class together.

Additionally, the Court explained that the plaintiffs don’t have to show that an “egregious policy” exists; it is enough to demonstrate a policy and practice of failing to comply with FOIA.

Members of the certified classes are individuals who filed or will file an A-File FOIA request with USCIS that has been pending or will be pending for more than 30 business days without a determination, including requests that USCIS has sent or will send to ICE for additional review.

Though this case is far from over, this ruling allows class members a meaningful opportunity to challenge the unjust system currently in place. It also gives hope that the agencies will ultimately adhere to the timelines under FOIA established by Congress.

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4556-Immigrants-Waiting-for-Their-Immigration-Records.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

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

Immigrant Children With Cancer, HIV, Cerebral Palsy Threatened With Deportation

By Walter Ewing www.immigrationimpact.com 

Without so much as a formal announcement, the Trump administration sent letters to families of sick children containing a dire warning: leave the country in 33 days or face deportation and a years-long ban on returning. Many of those who received a letter last week are Boston-based immigrants whose children suffer from cancer, cystic fibrosis, and HIV, among other illnesses.

Up until now, the children and their families had benefited from a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) program known as “medical deferred action.” This program allows immigrant families to remain in the United States for two-year periods if they can prove that a family member needs life-saving treatment for “serious medical conditions.” Many of the families in the program entered the United States through a visa or another legal channel. Deferred action enabled them to stay so the family member could receive medical treatment. 

USCIS says medical deferred action has been revised and is now limited to the foreign-born relatives of U.S. military service members. 

This abrupt change in policy—reportedly implemented with no formal notice on August 7—leaves the future of many children in doubt. Children who are now receiving treatment for illnesses such as epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and muscular dystrophy will be forced to return to countries where the medical treatment they need to survive may not exist. 

Some parents of the children, as well as several U.S. public officials, regard the new policy as a de facto death sentence. 

For instance, 16-year-old Jonathan Sanchez has been receiving treatment for cystic fibrosis for three years at Boston Children’s Hospital. With continued treatment, he has a life expectancy of 37 years. But if he is forced back home to Honduras? His mother puts it simply: “He would die.” In fact, his sister died of cystic fibrosis 18 years ago in Honduras. 

Not surprisingly, USCIS’s decision to deport seriously ill children has been met with fierce criticism. 

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh called the new policy “absurd and inhumane.” And Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey wrote, “the Trump administration is now literally deporting kids with cancer.” 

A USCIS spokesman told one media outlet that the new policy does not definitively take deferred action off the table, but that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will now consider requests for temporary relief from deportation. The letters sent by USCIS, however, don’t mention the transition to ICE. The letters simply state that “when you submitted your request [for deferred action] you were present in the United States contrary to law” and have 33 days to leave, or else the federal government will begin removal proceedings. Many families reportedly did not even receive the letters in their mailboxes until halfway through the 33-day period. 

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts is exploring possible legal action against the federal government over this new policy. 

It is not yet known how many people are affected by the change or if letters have been sent to anyone outside of the Boston area. Yet for the families who received notice of the shift, the fear is immediate. 

Source: www.immigrationimpact.com 

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4426-Sick-immigrants-Threatened-with-deportation.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

Immigrants Are Regularly Kept Locked Up For Months After Deportation Orders

Written by Kristin Macleod-Ball

When the U.S. government orders that an immigrant in its custody must be deported, the person isn’t supposed to remain incarcerated for long. Yet the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) often does not deport people promptly. This means thousands of people suffer in detention for months after they’re ordered deported. 

This is what the DHS’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) found in a report earlier this month. 

The federal watchdog looked at the cases of everyone in DHS custody with removal orders on a single day. Immigration law generally requires that DHS deport people within 90 days after a final removal order. But DHS held 3,053—almost a quarter of the people in custody with final removal orders—for longer than that. When OIG checked back in on those people three months later, it found that 1,284 were still detained. 

More than 1,000 immigrants were still locked up more than 6 months after they received their final removal orders. 

Almost 20 years ago, in a case called Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court ruled immigrants with final removal orders can’t be forced to stay in detention for an unlimited period of time. Even if the government can’t physically deport someone from the United States, the person can’t sit in jail indefinitely just because of their removal order. 

If deportation is not foreseeable, it’s usually considered unreasonable to keep a person jailed for more than 6 months after a removal order. There is an exception for people who haven’t been deported because they are challenging a removal order in the courts. Many of the people described in the OIG report were still in detention for this reason. However, others stayed detained for months because DHS or foreign governments delayed getting necessary travel documents or flight arrangements. 

Forty percent of the people detained for at least 90 days after their removal orders were held because of this type of government-created delay. 300 of them were still in DHS custody 3 months after that. 

While the OIG report’s findings are disheartening, they are not surprising. Under the Trump administration, DHS has expanded its capacity to detain immigrants. Currently, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains 48,000 immigrants every day. President Trump has requested funding to increase immigration detention even more. 

 

Regardless of the reason for the prolonged detention, it should not be regular DHS practice to incarcerate immigrants for months after they are ordered removed. Immigration detention is a form of civil detention—meaning it is not a form of punishment for any unlawful conduct. Keeping people locked up because they are exercising their legal rights to challenge their deportation or because of government-created delays is unjust. 

Fuente: www.immigrationimpact.com/

https://www.inmigracionyvisas.com/a4080-Immigrants-Are-Kept-Locked-Up-After-Deportation-Orders.html