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IS DETENTION OF IMMIGRANTS WISE PUBLIC POLICY?
Photograph taken outside of the Etowah County Detention Center (Gadsen, Alabama). The sign in the window reads: “We miss our kids.” Photograph credit: Miguel Angel Carpizo-Ituarte. The accompanying story can be located on Huffington Post
What is the Cost to U.S. Taxpayers of Detaining a Person
Who Cannot Prove They are in the Country Legally?
- The average cost of detaining an immigrant is approximately $133/person per day. A typical detention center holds approximately 1100 persons for a minimum 3-4 week period. However, some detainees are held for as long as six months.
- The less costly alternatives to detention include a combination of reporting and electronic monitoring. Studies show that these alternative methods are 90% cheaper and still yield an estimated 93% appearance rate before the immigration courts.
- Alternatives to detention cost as little as 70 cents/day, which could ultimately save taxpayers up to $1.44 billion a year.
Visitor to ICE
Photograph outside of Adelanto, CA detention facility (Geo Group,Inc.)
Photo credit: John Moore (2013)
Aerial view of the Adelanto Detention Center. Source (GeoGroup, Inc.)
LEGALITY:
Critics argue that using jailed migrants as cheap labor violates the prohibition against slavery and involuntary servitude (except as punishment for a crime) in the 13th Amendment to the U.S.Constitution.
Undocumented workers in a tent city with prison inmates. (AZ) Photo credit: J. Moore (2010).
Photograph of the “Tent City Jail” (capacity 2000) established in 1993 in Maricopa Ct. AZ.
CRITIQUES AND SUGGESTED REFORMS
Freedom for Immigrants, “DETENTION OPERATED BY FOR-PROFIT COMPANIES IS COSTLY.”
REPORT: Searching for the Living, The Dead and the New Disappeared on the Migrant Trail in Texas
( Houston United Working Group on Migrant Deaths in South Texas 2013)