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. Read the rest of this entry »