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“The paradigm was wrong,” Ms. Napolitano said of the nation’s patchwork of rented jail space, which has more than tripled in size since 1995, largely through Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts for cells more restrictive, and expensive, than required for a population that is largely not dangerous. Among those in detention on Sept. 1, 51 percent were considered felons, and of those, 11 percent had committed violent crimes.

“Serious felons deserve to be in the prison model,” Ms. Napolitano said, “but there are others. There are women. There are children.”

These and other nonviolent people should be sorted and detained or supervised in ways appropriate to their level of danger or flight risk, she said. Her goal, she said, is “to make immigration detention more cohesive, accountable and relevant to the entire spectrum of detainees we are dealing with.”

Several of the initiatives Ms. Napolitano described, to be formally announced on Tuesday afternoon, are steps on a road outlined in August, when John Morton, the assistant secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, announced an ambitious plan to transform the penal network into a “truly civil detention system.”

But the corrections expert he had put in charge of the overhaul, Dora B. Schriro, quit last month to become the corrections commissioner in New York City, after delivering a report on her eight-month top-to-bottom review of the system. The report had remained under wraps until now.

Dr. Schriro’s departure, and the delay in making her report public, dismayed many of the dozens of immigrant advocacy groups she consulted. Her 35-page report, provided to The New York Times after the interview on the condition that it not be posted on its Web site until Tuesday afternoon, calls for prompt attention to individual complaints about a lack of medical care, and “a credible grievance process, sustained in an environment free from intimidation and retaliation.”

In her interview, Ms. Napolitano said little about medical care but promised that within six months the Department of Homeland Security would “devise and implement” a classification system to better place people with medical or mental health needs in the right detention centers.

That vow puzzled some immigrant advocacy groups that deal with seriously ill detainees, including some who have died in federal custody after not getting proper treatment. The groups said they were concerned about the gap between announced plans to improve medical care and the actions of immigration officials.

Cheryl Little, the director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, pointed to the case of a woman she called Rosemarie, who, while being detained at the Glades County Detention Center, has suffered severe daily bleeding as a result of a fibroid tumor in her uterus.

“This has gone on for more than the five months she has been in ICE custody,” Ms. Little said. “Since June, we have tried everything to get her proper treatment. We started the requests at the local level and escalated up to D.H.S. headquarters. Ultimately we’ve had to file a lawsuit, and Rosemarie still hasn’t had the surgery she needs.”

Ms. Napolitano noted repeatedly that some of the initiatives she was announcing were “easier said than done.” Plans to speed the implementation of an online system for families and lawyers to locate detainees, for example, have been complicated by privacy issues and by the fact that many detainees share names and some stay in the system for only a couple of days, she said.

Likewise, though alternatives to detention are much cheaper than the jails under contract — $14 a day at most per person, compared with more than $100 a day — the overall cost is more complicated to calculate, she said.

About 19,000 noncitizens are supervised daily using alternatives like electronic bracelets, but their immigration cases are moved to the back of the line for adjudication. Homeland Security is working with the Justice Department, which oversees immigration courts, to modify that practice, she said, and this fall will submit a proposal to Congress to expand detention alternatives.

A request for proposals to build two model detention centers, one in California, will be issued within a year, said Mr. Morton, the ICE official. On Oct. 30, he said, he will solicit proposals and market research about converted hotels, nursing homes and other residential facilities that could serve as less expensive and less restrictive detention centers.

Mr. Morton said that on Sept. 18 the agency began housing nonviolent detainees, including new asylum seekers, at the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach, Fla., near free legal help. But Charu al-Sahli, the statewide director of the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the Broward center, run for profit by GEO, a large prison company formerly known as Wackenhut, had been housing asylum seekers since 2003.

A former work-release center now surrounded by barbed wire, it is being expanded to house 700, up from 530.

“Even though it’s a nicer environment than a jail,” Ms. al-Sahli said, “these are still the people we would hold up for release, not just nicer detention.”

Editorial
Salvaging Immigration Detention
NY Times
Published: October 5, 2009

The Obama administration is unveiling on Tuesday an ambitious plan to repair the immigration detention system, a scandal-plagued mix of federal, state and local lockups that grew vastly and rotted under the enforcement crusade led by former President George W. Bush.

The homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, and John Morton, the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, deserve credit for proposing to clean up a system notorious for shabby and abusive conditions, poor or nonexistent medical treatment and a trail of preventable injuries and deaths. The reforms, if they work and are maintained, would be a necessary corrective to years of willful neglect.

Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Morton say that they want to make the system more efficient, more accountable and less costly. The whole point of detaining immigrants, after all, is to quickly figure out which ones should be deported and to deport them, not to let them languish and certainly not to inflict punishment or undue suffering.

But immigration detention has strayed far from that basic mission. Tuesday’s announcement includes statements of “core principles” so fundamental that you have to wonder what they are replacing. Consider these:

• “ICE will detain aliens in settings commensurate with the risk of flight and danger they present.” That means the government has finally come to understand that detainees are not all violent criminals. They include young mothers and their children, asylum seekers, upright members of communities who, but for a lapsed visa or bureaucratic snafu, would not be in trouble with the law. Those who can make no case for staying here should be deported. But it’s gratifying to hear Ms. Napolitano and Mr. Morton acknowledge that nonviolent noncriminals — particularly those seeking refuge — should not be warehoused behind bars. They have promised to increase alternatives to detention, and we expect them to do that — even if it means a vast effort nationwide.

• “ICE will provide sound medical care.” This fundamental government responsibility has been shamefully neglected in centers around the country. The reform plan refers vaguely to a new “medical classification system” for detainees that should improve treatment and reduce unnecessary and disruptive medical transfers. ICE should make clear what that means and how that will help those who become sick or injured only after they are admitted and classified.

Perhaps the most important principle behind these reforms is the reassertion of central control over the sprawling, subcontracted system. The new plan asserts that central control is not only smarter and more efficient but also cheaper. “Each of these reforms,” the agency says, “are expected to be budget-neutral or result in cost savings through reduced reliance on contractors to perform key federal duties.”

Immigration detention is a prime example of things going bad when the government subcontracts a vital mission to poorly supervised outsiders. The Obama administration, like its predecessor, is under ferocious political pressure to be seen as tough on people who have been unfairly depicted as a fundamentally criminal, dangerous crowd. It is pushing back with an effort to be sane and proportionate. If the reforms announced on Tuesday work half as well as promised, the country will be closer to a detention system it does not have to be ashamed of.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 6, 2009, on page A30 of the New York edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/opinion/06tue1.html
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