Kate Jastram

It’s time to rethink our detention policies for asylum seekers. Not many people are aware that the United States routinely imprisons terrified (note: not terrorist) people who have fled to our shores seeking asylum from persecution and torture. The new Secretary of Homeland Security needs to focus on less expensive and more humane alternatives to detention, to improve conditions for those who must be detained, and above all, to give her Special Adviser for Refugees enough clout to ensure that the agency’s national security mission does not completely overwhelm the humanitarian aspect of its responsibilities.

Most asylum seekers have no criminal record and pose no threat to the public. An asylum application is a civil, not a criminal, matter, heard by an administrative judge, with no right to counsel at public expense. Yet DHS keeps asylum seekers in federal immigration detention facilities, in for-profit prisons, and in actual county jails. Conditions are uniformly grim, complete with guards, guns, and prison garb. The common denominator in our asylum detention policy is a penal model that is wildly expensive, and completely unsuited either to our needs for security or the asylum seekers’ needs for a prompt and fair hearing of their claim.

A distracted DHS bureaucracy has been stubbornly resistant to even the most well-documented and reasonable recommendations for focusing detention resources in a cost-effective and humane manner. At the request of Congress, a respected independent federal agency - the bipartisan United States Commission on International Religious Freedom - was given unprecedented access to detention sites, agency files, and other aspects of the asylum system.

The resulting expert study, in which I participated, recommended a fresh approach to the detention of asylum seekers, addressing legitimate immigration enforcement concerns without undue reliance on the high cost of high security facilities.

It’s a sign of DHS’ inattention that it was not able to formulate a written response to the Commission on International Religious Freedom for nearly four years, until the Bush Administration’s last days in office. And although the agency made some limited attempts to implement some of the Commission’s recommendations, it also instituted new policies that make it even more difficult for asylum seekers to be released while waiting for their day in court. The Commission on International Religious Freedom, to its credit, continues to press DHS to reconsider its counterproductive detention policies. Senator Joseph Lieberman has also been instrumental in trying to keep the agency’s feet to the fire.

However, crafting a sensible and humane asylum detention policy is a job that can be accomplished only with leadership from the Administration. Incoming DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano was asked by Senator Lieberman about the Commission’s detention recommendations in her confirmation hearing, and promised to look into it. It’s an encouraging start.

Kate Jastram is a Lecturer in Residence, and an Affiliated Scholar at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity.

Both comments and pings are currently closed.