Written by Christine Ho   

For privacy’s sake, let us call him Juan Valdez. He is 25 years old, with a U.S. citizen wife and two children, born in the United States, ages 4 and 2. Like many immigrants in detention, he is not a violent criminal. He was jailed initially for traffic violations but was transferred to immigration detention because his “green card” had expired, although he had entered the country legally. When I met him in the immigration detention center, he had already spent 5 months there, after 4 months in jail. During those 9 months, he saw his family only once. His family was unable to visit him more than once because his wife works delivering pizza for minimum wage and cannot afford gas money for the journey, which is more than 2 hours’ drive each way. Even worse, without Juan’s income, she was unable to pay the rent and the family was evicted. She managed a temporary arrangement for the children to stay with relatives while she moved in with neighbors. Juan’s story of family separation and hardship is not extraordinary. Indeed, many detained immigrant stories are even more heart breaking.
Detention fractures immigrant families; deportation often shatters families permanently. Detaining immigrants thousands of miles away from their families and lawyers (only 15% are lucky enough to have a lawyer) and transferring them without warning to other detention centers all over the country guarantees their complete isolation from the outside world. Once an immigrant disappears inside the system, it is extremely difficult for family members, friends, or lawyers to locate or communicate with them. The irony is that the majority of immigrants in detention are held under administrative or civil law, which means they are not serving a criminal sentence. Contrary to popular belief, it is not a crime to enter and reside in the United States without authorization (being undocumented). Immigration violations are CIVIL OFFENSES or misdemeanors, like running a red light. Nevertheless, locking up immigrants and deporting them has been happening for decades, although the sole purpose of detention is to ensure that immigrants will appear at immigration court hearings and comply with deportation orders.
The U.S. system of detention and deportation is operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Dept. of Homeland Security (DHS). It is a network of about 250 privately-run prisons sprawled across the country in remote locations to warehouse thousands of unauthorized immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees while they are waiting for their immigration and asylum cases to be decided. For more than five years, ICE has detained almost 400,000 immigrants a year. Deportations have also averaged 400,000 per year for the last five years and have passed the two million mark, more than at any other point in U.S. history. This means that more than two million immigrant families have been separated at the rate of more than 1,000 per day.
Immigration detention costs taxpayers $164 per day per person, or $5.6 million per day or about $2 billion dollars each year. In stark contrast, the cost of Alternative to Detention (ATD) programs range from 17 cents to $22 per day per person. These programs appear to be equally, if not more, effective: ICE statistics for FY2010 confirm an actual court appearance rate of 93.8 percent. Why might the federal government spend $164 per day to detain an immigrant rather than 17 cents to $22 per day to monitor him/her with an electronic ankle bracelet or other types of supervision? First, there is a “bed quota” mandated by Congress for private prison corporations to detain 34,000 immigrants, EACH DAY, nation-wide or else lose their funding from Congress. No other law enforcement institution is subject to such a quota. Second, enormous profits (over $1 billion in earnings per year) have been and continue to be made by private prison corporations. The same goes for local governments operating county and state jails in collaboration with ICE.
Tearing apart an immigrant family is no less heart breaking than separating an American family. When an immigrant father is deported, he leaves behind a “single mom” struggling to support herself and her children as the sole breadwinner. When an immigrant mother is deported, the mirror image happens. When both parents are deported, children become orphans, even U.S. citizen children, who are thrust into the child welfare system of foster care or adoption. Even worse, the separation is often permanent because the rules and regulations of the detention system often prevent detained or deported parents from participating in “case plans” for reuniting with their children.
It is time to view undocumented immigrants as human beings, not extraterrestrials. Families are what make us human. Fracturing immigrant families makes a mockery of American family values. Our own humanity is at risk if we practice one standard for Americans and another for undocumented immigrants. If we wish to retain our humanity, we must recognize the humanity of immigrants and acknowledge that undocumented immigrants are our co-workers, neighbors, friends and sometimes even family.
Is shattering families the American way? A possible solution might be to work towards resurrecting the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections for Separated Children Act sponsored by Senators Al Franken and Chuck Grassley a while ago. Its aim was to keep immigrant families together and prevent children from entering foster care on their way to adoption. It would allow immigrant parents to arrange for child care; allow children to call and visit their parents in detention; allow parental participation in family court proceedings; allow deported parents to coordinate repatriation with their children; train detention personnel in best practices for protecting children and require ICE to consider the best interest of children in decisions affecting their parents. It would certainly be the humane thing to do and might even be the American thing to do.