Immigration Detention Designed to Break the Will of Detainees

Before he was taken in the middle of the night to immigration detention, Pedro Guzman was a devoted stay-at-home dad. These days, Pedro only sees his wife, Emily (an American citizen), and their son, Logan, every couple months — whenever Emily (now a single, working mom) can manage the expensive nine-hour trek from their home in North Carolina to the detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia. Even once they've made it to Pedro's facility, Emily and Logan are often forced to wait hours after their appointment time. (Imagine containing an excited three-year-old in an empty room for four hours.) The reward for their patience? A one-hour visit with dad through a plexiglass screen.

Like many immigration detention centers throughout the country, Stewart Detention Center does not permit contact visits. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) leaves the question of contact visits up the discretion of the individual facility. Many of the centers opt not to allow it.

Pedro's case, like many, is complicated and bureaucratically laden with mix-ups and wrongful charges. But to top that off, Pedro has been transferred to four different detention centers since his arrest in September of 2009. Between being wrongfully detained, prohibited from touching his wife and child, and repeatedly transferred further and further from home, Pedro is beginning to lose his will to hang on.

It seems that in Pedro's case, the system is functioning just as it is intended.

Because the fact is, our immigration system treats immigrant detainees like dangerous, life-threatening criminals. Ultimately, what use is keeping them apart from their families other than to break them of their will to fight their case?

As stated in the well-known report "Locked Up But Not Forgotten": “In effect, immigration detention is punishment — not just for the immigrants in detention, but for their families and communities as well.”

Pedro's two-year-old son Logan watched as ICE stormed his house in the middle of the night and took away his dad. Today, Logan is afraid to go to school lest the "bad men" come and take him away, and fantasizes about super-hero powers that would allow him to break his dad from prison. Of course, Emily wants her husband back for good. But at least, during this tortuous, grueling process, she wants her son to be able to hug his dad every now and again for real, not through a plexiglass screen. Sadly, the Guzman's story is all too common among immigrant families in the United States.

This must change.  Tell ICE to reform their policies and allow contact visits to behaving, non-violent detainees across the board. It's only human.

Photo Credit: Dieu