Tag Archives: immigration

Immcarceration: Examining America’s Immigration Detention System (A Three Part Series)

Published here.

While America’s problems with excessive incarceration have received increased attention, until recently, immigration detention has been conspicuously absent from this discussion. In the wake of each year, about 400,000 people are placed in immigration detention. On any given day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) keeps at least 34,000 immigrants incarcerated while they await a hearing with an immigration judge. This arbitrary (and incredibly high) number is mainly attributable to the so-called “detention-bed mandate,” an arbitrary quota set by Congress that ICE needs to meet. The quota is written into the federal law that appropriates funding for ICE. Congress requires the agency to “maintain a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds” at any given time. The quota, first enacted in 2007, is an oppressive aberration—no other federal agency is required to detain a certain number of people.

This is the first of a three part series by Antoaneta Tileva examining immigration detention in these United States.

Unlike detention in the criminal-justice context, immigration custody does not have a punitive function, but is designed to ensure that immigrants appear at their hearings and/or can be successfully deported after a final order of removal. The government’s justification for family detention has also hinged on its importance as a deterrent to illegal immigration. Despite its supposedly non-punitive function, nearly all of the over 350 detention facilities are built and run on a corrections model. Billion-dollar companies like the Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group run almost 62% of these immigration jails. The quota is costing taxpayers in excess of $2 billion each year when alternative community-based programs have a strong track record of success, at a much lower cost.

The human suffering caused by the policy of incarceration is a trenchant commentary on the real toll hidden behind its euphemistic, glib characterization of “detention.” Family separation and the resultant care and economic insecurity deeply scars individuals and communities; detainee abuse such as denial of water, medical treatment, adequate nutrition, or physical safety is far too rampant and, even worse, ignored.

While noncitizens in removal proceedings have the right to be represented by counsel at their own expense, many detention facilities are located in remote areas making it difficult for detainees to seek an attorney. On average, 84% of detained immigrants go through proceedings without legal representation. The detention bed quota contributes to the number of people who must go through removal proceedings unrepresented.

In many respects, immigrant detainees are treated less favorably than criminal defendants. U.S. mandatory detention laws cover broad categories of non-citizens, including lawful permanent residents (LPRs), asylum-seekers, petty offenders, and persons with U.S. families and other strong and longstanding ties to the United States. Sixty percent of the unauthorized have resided in the United States for 10 years or more and 17 percent for at least 20 years (Migration and Refugee Services/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Center for Migration Studies). Most criminal defendants receive custody hearings by judicial officers shortly after their apprehension and they can be released subject to conditions that will reasonably ensure their court appearance and protect the public—this is not the case with immigrant detainees.       

The US immigrant detention system grew more than fivefold between 1994 and 2013. The number of persons detained annually increased from roughly 85,000 persons in 1995 to 440,557 in 2013 (Migration and Refugee Services/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Center for Migration Studies). Since the beginning of the Obama administration’s detention reform initiative in 2009, annual detention numbers have reached record levels. More persons pass through the U.S. immigrant detention system each year than through federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities. In 2012, the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detained a record 477,523 adult noncitizens. Since the Obama Administration announced its detention reform initiative in 2009, the number of noncitizens DHS detains yearly has increased by nearly 25 percent.  Since passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIIRIRA) in 1996, it has expanded over fivefold. The chart below, by the Center for Migration Studies, illustrates the precipitous increase in both detentions and removals.

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 required ICE to increase, in each fiscal year from 2006 to 2010, the number of immigration detention beds available by 8,000 above the preceding fiscal year’s number. ICE was under the pressure to not only increase the requirement but use it. In February 2006, then Assistant Secretary of ICE Julie Myers Wood met with then Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security Harold Rogers (R-KY) and Representatives Louis Gohmert (R-TX), John Culberson (R-TX), and Judge John Carter (R-TX). In that meeting, Representatives Culberson and Carter highlighted that “detention facilities in Laredo are only one-third full,” and that there are “hundreds of empty beds.” Chairman Rogers noted that as one of his “key issues,” he wanted “no empty beds.”

The use of arbitrary numerical goals escalated in 2009 when Congress began formally including the national bed quota in annual appropriations bills. Since then, the detention bed quota has been written into the DHS Appropriations Act, which states, “funding made available under this heading shall maintain a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds.” In addition to requiring that ICE maintain the physical capacity to detain at least 34,000 people at any time, many members of Congress have urged ICE to interpret this language to require that all detention beds be in use at all times—that is, that a minimum of 34,000 beds not only be funded, but also filled, every day.

Over time, congressional frustration over empty beds has grown. In April 2015, after a heated exchange with ICE Director Sarah Saldaña, Representative John Culberson (R-TX) suggested that the current quota language be altered to replace the word “maintain” with “fill.” Congressional staff have also repeatedly, if incorrectly, told ICE that keeping an average of at least 34,000 detained per day is a statutory requirement (“Banking on Detention” 2). Former ICE Director John Sandweg expressed this frustration in a September 2013 interview with Bloomberg, saying that “having a mandate out there that says you have to detain a certain number – regardless of how many folks are a public safety threat or threaten the integrity of the system – doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. You need the numbers to drive the detention needs, not set an arbitrary number that then drives your operation.”

Guaranteed minimums predate the national quota’s inception and have existed at least since 2003. Their establishment can be best explained in the context of the private prison industry’s past instability and its voracious pursuit of guaranteed profit. In 1984, CCA built the first private prison in the U.S., the Houston Processing Center, an immigration detention center in Houston, TX. Although the private prison system has grown considerably since then, in the late 1990s, the industry lost steam as CCA almost went bankrupt and the stock of Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (now GEO) fell significantly. After being bailed out by the now-defunct hedge fund Lehman Brothers, the private prison industry saw the government’s post-9/11 interest in expanding immigration detention as a potential cash cow and began vying for more federal contracts to incarcerate immigrants.

Revitalized after the period of crisis, the private prison industry moved to secure its future by pursuing the incorporation of guaranteed minimums into contracts. CCA’s 2003 contract for the Houston Processing Center was one of the first to include a guaranteed minimum, this one for 375 persons. Since then, an increasing number of contracts between ICE and private contractors for detention or detention-related services have included guaranteed minimums. These guarantees act as taxpayer-funded insurance for private companies against any changes in immigration enforcement policy or prioritization, because the companies are paid regardless of how many individuals ICE detains. Guaranteed minimums have now spread to every type of immigration detention facility.

Even DHS recognized the injustice and absurdity behind this system. In testimony before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security’s hearing on the President’s FY 2014 budget, DHS then-Secretary Janet Napolitano called the bed quota “artificial” and stated that, “We ought to be managing the actual detention population to risk, not an arbitrary number.” In May 2015, Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton criticized the bed quota by saying that “People go out and round up people in order to get paid on a per-bed basis. That just makes no sense at all to me. That’s not the way we should be running any detention facility”. On June 17, 2015, Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) introduced the Protecting Taxpayers and Communities from Local Detention Quotas Act (H.R. 2808). The bill seeks to end the practice of including guaranteed bed minimums in immigration detention contracts.

Despite public outrage at the quota, The House Committee on Appropriations passed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Appropriations Act for 2016. The accompanying Committee report increased the bed quota to 34,040 average daily detention beds: 31,280 for adults at an estimated cost of $123.54 per bed and 2,760 family detention beds at an estimated daily cost of $342.73.

Who benefits from this quota is at the crux of this issue. For-profit private prisons, which get compensated per bed, hold more than half of all immigration detainees. Even a small reduction in the quota would impact their profits. Immigrant detention has become a huge business. It costs a staggering $2 billion a year to incarcerate enough people to satisfy the quota—a figure that represents approximately 40 percent of ICE’s $5.3 billion budget for fiscal year 2014. Put another way, the cost of the quota is equal to the entire annual budget of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Sixty-two percent of all ICE beds are now run by private prison contractors, meaning for-profit prison companies operate nine of the ten largest immigrant detention centers in the country — eight of those ten are run by CCA or GEO Group. As their share of the immigrant-detention market has grown in recent years so have the companies’ profits CCA’s profits went from $133 million in 2007 to $195 million in 2014, while the GEO Group’s profits made a staggering 244 percent jump during that time period from $41.8 million to $143.8 million.

A 2014 investors presentation from CCA illustrates the incentive to push for every single ICE bed to be filled: “filling vacant beds would add ≈ $1.00 to [Earnings Per Share] & [Adjusted Funds From Operations] per share,” the company wrote. In a recent company filing, GEO wrote that efforts to reform the immigration system, which could put thousands of undocumented immigrants on the path to legalization, may harm the company’s bottom line: “Immigration reform laws which are currently a focus for legislators and politicians at the federal, state and local level also could materially adversely impact us.” Both companies have expanded to build centers for detaining asylum-seeking immigrant families in Texas. In 2014, GEO opened the Karnes County Residential Center southeast of San Antonio, where 600 women and children, most of whom have fled violence in Central America, are being held (GEO plans to expand capacity to 1,200 detainees). Two hunger strikes have erupted in the facility due to reprehensible treatment of the detainees.

Not surprisingly, the industry is an avid lobbyist. One private-prison company, for instance, spent more than $13 million between 2005 and 2013 on lobbying. With combined annual revenues in the billions, Corrections Corporation of America, the GEO Group, and Management and Training Corporation can afford it. In 2014 alone, they spent nearly $2 million lobbying Congress, and individuals from these companies gave well over $500,000 to congressional candidates as well. Federal political giving from the three largest companies favors Republicans in most cycles. For MTC in 2014, 61 percent of the $46,500 it gave to federal candidates went to Republicans; for GEO, it was 72 percent of the $230,111 it contributed. CCA showed the starkest preference, giving 85 percent of its $267,464 in donations to Republican candidates.

Read Part 2 here.

Read Part 3 here.

 

 

Professor Akbar Ahmed Presents Findings from “Journey into Europe” Project

My article
Also published in Stoner’s Journal

Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University’s School of International Service, recently reported on findings from his fieldwork in Europe over the past two years and gave a preview of his upcoming book and documentary.

Journey into Europe is Ahmed’s fourth project in a series of award-winning books published with Brookings Press. The series explores relations between the West and the Islamic world after 9/11. Ahmed is one of the world’s leading authorities on contemporary Islam.

His first book in the series, Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization, examined what Muslims thought of the United States and the West through fieldwork across the Muslim world. The second book, Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam, showed how Americans perceived Islam and Muslims. The third book, The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam, explored the tribal societies on the periphery of nations.

The next volume, Journey into Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Empire, will examine the historical relationship between Europe and the Muslim world, the contemporary challenges posed by increased immigration from the Muslim world, and the new pressures of security, globalization, and multiculturalism.

Dean James Goldgeier moderated a panel on February 11 that included Associate Professor Randolph Persaud, director of the Comparative and Regional Studies program, Distinguished Historian in Residence Michael Brenner, director of the Center for Israel Studies at AU, and Professor Tamara Sonn, the Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the History of Islam at Georgetown University.

Journey into Europe explores the intersecting issues of the increased immigration of Muslims to Europe and the growing number of right-wing parties in Europe. The study also clarifies common misconceptions about European Muslims, for instance, the idea that they subscribe to one cultural community.

Ahmed described an “ominous, threatening landscape in Europe.” His perception of Europe’s role as the “mother continent,” its large Muslim population, and continued tensions between Islam and the West make this project timely and important in contributing to “healing a fractured world,” he explained. As an anthropologist, he noted that his project is both practically-grounded and academically-minded.

Ahmed noted that the Muslim community in Europe is not united. “It is divided along ethnic, sectarian, political, and national lines,” he said. “The monolith of ‘Muslim communities’ does not exist as such as there is far too much diversity.” He noted that there are indigenous Muslims who are native to Europe and non-indigenous Muslims, including immigrants in France, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

Persaud noted that European Muslims are increasingly living in a “third space” that neither fits the traditional notion of the Middle Eastern Muslim or the notion of “Orientalism” seen in colonial times. Thus, many Muslim immigrants find themselves in a state of limbo, said Ahmed, even those who have lived in Europe for a long time, such as the Pakistanis in the United Kingdom.

The project’s scope–and engagement with a wide spectrum of Muslim experiences in Europe–makes it a very timely and cogent endeavor.

A Disconnected Modem: My Accent

“Where are you from?” “WHERE are you from!?”

Where am I from…two places, really, but I have a feeling I already know the one you want me to identify, so I will answer that way. You might wonder how such a simple question could be so incredibly loaded. Well, this isn’t really the question I am being asked, you see.

“Where are you FROM?” (Asked with an at-best-rather-thinly-veiled-expression-of-dismay-bordering-on-disgust)

“Bulgaria. But I have lived in the United States for the last 24 years.”

“Wow. Your accent is SO strong and heavy.”

“Where are you from?”

“Washington, DC.”

“No, but where are you REALLY from?”

“Bulgaria.”

Ok, let’s parse this out.

“I can’t be languid about my linguistics; I don’t get to be detached from my discourse.

My accent could be described as droll, charming, different, or interesting. Or, it could be a signal of A. a general stupidity and/or ineptitude, or B. an inability to adapt and make myself more socially acceptable and, therefore, palatable to your sensibilities. Let’s talk about A. The incongruity of this will not escape you: I teach GRE test prep at an university. My vocabulary, factually-speaking, is probably far wider than that of most “native” speakers. I have no issues comprehending or speaking English. Yet, as soon as I open my mouth, I am waging a tacit battle against so many assumptions: that I am somehow intellectually-deficient, that I am only here to visit for a short while and couldn’t possibly live here, that I just got here, and am soon to return “home.” At the very least, it forces me to engage–to make excuses, to explain, to expound, to prove, to dispel, to educate, to elucidate, to open hearts and minds. Casual banter becomes…well, not quite so casual.

I can’t be languid about my linguistics; I don’t get to be detached from my discourse.

I sometimes wonder how the people who say, “But your accent is SO strong,” expect me to respond. I am not sure there is a retort to this. Is there? “Ehm, I am sorry, I guess…”

This, of course, is about something much bigger than my accent.  I first came to U.S. when I was twelve. I would sit in class, unable to raise my hand or speak. The words were lodged into my throat…It felt like the only way they would come out was if you turned me upside down and shook them out of me. They probably would have landed like marbles on the floor, enunciating their landing one by one. I remember my utter dismay when, after the first test I took (in geography, funnily enough), the teacher announced “Only one person got a 100 on this test and she hasn’t even been here as long as all of you have.” Even more amusingly, I later won the award for the best student in U.S. history during high school.

I digress–what I’m really saying here is that my accent is merely the manifestation of something bigger. It’s both the cause and the reminder of my general alie-nation. “I’m cut off from the main line, like a disconnected modem.” You see, my own words are foreign to me. When I speak and hear the accent, I feel divorced from *me.* Because the words certainly don’t sound accented in my head. Mostly, I feel like I am talking to people through a plexiglass window. There is a disconnect. Sometimes literally. I am constantly made aware of it as soon as I begin speaking, laden with–and beset by–assumptions.

 

Nipsters: Are Nazi Groups Adopting Hipster Swag for Wider Appeal?

Much has been made of the supposed wave of hipsterfication sweeping through Germany’s neo-Nazi community. In fact, a neologism emerged for the express purpose of describing these Nazi hipsters: “Nipsters.” Adopting some familiar hipster tropes–veganism, gauged ears, and *gasp* hip hop, right-wing groups are seeking to take their message to the bespectacled, bearded masses.
Is this mere sensationalism or an actual movement?

Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, author of Blood and Culture: Youth, Right-Wing Extremism, and National Belonging in Contemporary Germany, talked about the commercialization of right-wing imagery in a process she calls “extreme gone mainstream.” She has studied the use of coded messages to convey a right-wing orientation for the last four years in Germany on a grant by The Spencer Foundation. Conducting interviews with high school students in two “trade” schools in Germany, she has observed the fragmentation of the scene. “There used to be a unified aesthetic image that indicated right-wing affiliation…the typical ‘skinhead’ look, if you will–shaved head, bomber jacket, and combat boots. That is really no longer the case. There is no ‘uniform.’”

Instead there are brands that tacitly and in a veiled way signal one’s allegiance. For example, the t-shirt company Thor Steinar manufactures a shirt with an image of a fox and the words “Desert Fox: Afrikakorps,” thinly veiled code that refers to the nickname of Erwin Rommel who commanded German troops in North Africa during World War II. Others are more straightforward, like a T-shirt with the words “Hunting Season” sold by Ansgar Aryan.

 

Dr. Miller-Idriss also spoke about the appropriation of Nordic myths and imagery by right-wing groups. “It is expressing racial purity by evoking Nordic imagery. That of Vikings, snowy glaciers, and ski slopes, all in essence implying Aryan imagery without directly referencing it.”

 

“We are seeing a lot more layers of coding in Germany due to the ban on the Nazi party as such. Because displaying that sort of thing in an overt way is illegal, we are seeing a lot more veiled imagery.” Some of the other images used by these sort of groups including alpha-numeric symbolism, such as the number 88, which stands for HH or Heil Hitler. In some rare cases, general freedom fighter symbols are also appropriated such as Palestinian scarves or Che Guevara t-shirts. Symbols of national pride are also prominent, as are those that convey hyper-masculinity such as Vikings with bulging biceps.

“There is clearly a divorce between style and ideology. The aesthetic expression of the right-wing movement, much like the movement itself, is extremely varied, fragmented, and not homogeneous at all. And funnily enough, one would expect the commercialization aspect of this to have the United States at the vanguard, but this is not the case–this really is a very specific to Germany phenomenon.”

Ultimately, while Dr. Miller has not exactly seen first-hand the “hipsterization” of the Aryan-supremacist movement, she notes that the “traditional” neo-Nazi stereotype is a relic of the past. Style over substance has long plagued just about every subculture at some point or another–many of the new supporters of right-wing ideology are not even particularly active in the movement, nor would they describe themselves as politically engaged, period. Some, perhaps, are not even especially devoted to the ideology, instead merely displaying the trappings of the movement. The ideology, too, has undergone modification–anti-Europeanism now joins and sometimes even trumps Aryan and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Her findings in Blood and Culture indicate that, for the majority of German youth, right-wing extremism is more popular for its portrayal of national pride than its xenophobic and racist tendencies as many youth today support a culture-based rather than blood-based German identity. She ultimately finds that the extremist tendencies of German youth stem from the historical taboo of “German pride.” For the younger generation, espousing a nationalist, extremist movement is a cry for unity and belonging that has been historically absent. And that belonging can sometimes be expressed in consumer choices too.

Police Power and Race Riots

Professor Cathy Schneider Chronicles Link Between Police Repression and Race Riots

Associate Professor Cathy Schneider’s new book, Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York, traces the history of urban upheaval in New York and Paris, focusing on the interaction between police and minority youth. Schneider found that riots erupt when political elites activate racial boundaries, police engage in racialized violence, and racial minorities lack alternative avenues of redress.
Schneider, an expert on social movements, collective violence, policing, criminal justice, immigration, and racial and ethnic discrimination, says the book evolved out of her community work where she encountered first-hand the police harassment and racial profiling of minority communities. “This made me wonder about conducting a comparative study between what I saw in New York and somewhere else. I wanted to see how the French police were similar or different in their treatment of minority communities.”

Then, on October 27, 2005, an African boy and an Arab boy, 15-year-old Bouna Traore and 17-year-old Zyed Benna, were electrocuted while hiding from police in a power substation in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois. A third teenager suffered serious burns. This sparked riots against police brutality and harassment in Paris and other French cities that lasted several months.
Schneider became interested in why these cases led to riots in France, while similar cases did not lead to riots in New York. Schneider began her research in Paris by interviewing the families of victims of police violence, including the brother of one of the deceased teenagers. One of her main findings was that in racially divided unequal societies, police are tasked with the job of enforcing racial boundaries. The activation of racial boundaries, Schneider found, makes violent explosions more likely. As communities are polarized along an “us vs. them” boundary and there are no avenues of redress, riots are more likely to spark.
Schneider also discovered that political campaigns shaped how police understood their jobs. In studying campaigns, she found that candidates in tight elections often won by appealing to racial fears. “These fears are often coded as ‘wars on crime’ or ‘drugs’ or ‘illegal immigration,’” she explains. In such a context, police are rewarded for increasing the number of arrests and for targeting minorities.
Schneider says that the reason there have not been race riots in New York since the 1960s is the presence of options of redress that dampen social unrest. Community organizers in New York have developed a “standard non-violent repertoire” to protest police brutality. State and federal courts also opened to minority plaintiffs and allow minorities to sue on a civil and not just criminal basis, which helps to diffuse tensions. The availability of avenues of redress, Schneider postulates, is the variable that differentiates New York from Paris.