Judge Orders U.S. to Release Immigrant Women & Children
The impractical dimensions of incarceration are on public display again ... as always ... transcending politics, race, the public versus private prison debate, and motivation. This display, the 23,479th such display since 2010 by our reckoning, is a court order from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California requiring the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, to release detained immigrant children from one public and two private detention facilities. It seems those agencies had been detaining all female-headed families of Central American origin under a "no-release" policy in an effort to contain the surge of Central Americans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Despite ultimate motivation to help the new arrivals while a determination of their right to stay in the U.S. is decided, the children and their mothers were subjected to terrible conditions. The U.S. government argued the immigrants had amenities: meals, medical & dental services, recreational opportunities and education for the children. That was the original intention. The illegal immigrants showed otherwise, and complained of cold, unsanitary conditions, zero or inadequate mattresses, and that sometimes it is was so crowded the children had to sleep standing up. The judge found that the government was not providing "safe and sanitary" holding cells per a 1997 consent agreement. The original lawsuit about these conditions was first filed in 1985, THIRTY YEARS AGO.
It's the same old story: despite the best of intentions at the higher levels, we find overcrowding, inadequate conditions and resulting mental injuries, in this case to children. The first-named defendant is Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, a distinguished attorney. Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense under presidents George W. Bush and Obama, said that Jeh Johnson "proved to be the finest lawyer I ever worked with in government—a straightforward, plain-speaking man of great integrity, with common sense to burn and a good sense of humor" and that he "trusted and respected him like no other lawyer I had ever worked with." We must admit that something happens between the very top of the bureaucracy and the detention centers. Always has, and always will. Something bad usually happens when refugees or any people are detained on relatively short notice. These Central Americans were told in many instances that they were not wanted in the U.S. This stated dislike is also correlated with bad conditions.
This is not to say that the children involved should be released, deported, allowed to stay or handled in any other manner. The point is that incarceration as invariably practiced has inevitable logistic, human rights, funding and other major systemic problems that we need to consider when judging alternatives to incarceration or detention. The more one studies incarceration, the better alternatives look.
[Jenny L. Flores, et al. v. Jeh Johnson, et al., CV 85-4544-DMG-AGR, available at s3.amazonaws.com; quoted material about Jeh Johnson from Wikipedia.]