america-wakiewakie:The US Keeps 34,000 Immigrants in Detention Each Day Simply to Meet a Quota | The

america-wakiewakie:The US Keeps 34,000 Immigrants in Detention Each Day Simply to Meet a Quota | The NationOn any given day, Immigration and Customs Enforcement keeps at least 34,000 immigrants locked up while they wait for their cases to be heard in immigration court. Many of these detainees are incarcerated not because they are dangerous or likely to skip their court dates, but because ICE must meet an arbitrary quota set by Congress. This quota, which is often referred to as the “detention-bed mandate,” is a disgrace and should be eliminated.The quota is written into the federal law that appropriates funding for ICE. Congress requires the agency to “maintain a level of not less than 34,000 detention beds” at any given time. The quota was first enacted in 2007, and it appears yet again in the 2015 appropriations bill currently pending in the House of Representatives.The quota is unprecedented. No other federal or state agency is required by law to detain a specific number of people without any regard to whether the quota makes sense from a law-enforcement perspective. Indeed, the quota is so excessive that it has been criticized by the very immigration authorities charged with enforcing it. At a congressional hearing in April 2013, then–Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano argued that ICE should be detaining people “according to public-safety threats, level of offense…not an arbitrary bed number.”For the 2015 fiscal year, the Department of Homeland Security has asked Congress to lower the quota to 30,539 beds. But even that number is too high: immigration detainees have not been convicted of any crime, and many are eventually released and allowed to stay in this country. (Read Full Text) (Photo Credit: #1-3 Family of Rosendo Juarez-Hernandez, scheduled to be deported that day, wait to see him before he is sent back to Mexico. Saverio Truglia for Al Jazeera America | #4 AP Photo/Los Angeles Times, Rick Loomis, Pool | #5 Maer Torrescano, 6, rests with his father Havacuc, 24, from the state of Morelos, Mexico, at the U.S. Border Patrol detention center in Nogales, Arizona, May 31, 2006. REUTERS/Jeff Topping) -- source link
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