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Today, August, 6, 2009, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) has announced an overhaul of the current immigration detention system. Currently, when foreign nationals are arrested for immigration violations or other offenses that affect their immigration status, they are detained in one of over 350 decentralized, penal institutions. The institutions are either jails operated by local governments or privatized detention centers.

Over the past several years, there have reports of insufficient medical care and poor treatment of foreign nationals held by ICE. Earlier this year, the NY Times published an article about a computer engineer from China who died from a lack of proper medical care while he was detained in a contracted detention center in Rhode Island.

So, what will the new overhaul include? According to John Morton, Assistant Secretary of ICE, the next three to five years will bring facilities located and operated solely for immigration detention purposes. These facilities will be run by ICE and, according to Assistant Secretary Morton, will address many of the issues regarding oversight and medical care.

What will the cost be? Will it cost more or less than contracting with public and private facilities? The data isn’t in or at least it hasn’t been yet.

Tags: Department of Homeland Security, Detainee, DHS, ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Immigration reform, John Morton, NY Times, USCIS

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 4:07 pm and is filed under immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.