Obama Rejects Legally Enforceable Rules for Immigrant Detainees

by Dave Bennion · 2009-07-29 08:00:00 UTC
Topics:

From the NY Times yesterday:

The Obama administration has refused to make legally enforceable rules for immigration detention, rejecting a federal court petition by former detainees and their advocates and embracing a Bush-era inspection system that relies in part on private contractors.

The decision, contained in a six-page letter received by the plaintiffs this week, disappointed and angered immigration advocacy organizations around the country. They pointed to a stream of newly available documents that underscore the government’s failure to enforce minimum standards it set in 2000, including those concerning detainees’ access to basic health care, telephones and lawyers, even as the number of people detained has soared to more than 400,000 a year.

This decision puts the Obama administration's commitment to rule of law for immigrant detainees in doubt.  Predictability, transparency, and regularity are all undermined by the current absence of binding rules regarding treatment of detainees.

The fact that DHS responded as it did, and only after being ordered to do so by a federal judge after stonewalling advocates on this issue for two and a half years, does not say good things about the administration's approach to immigration detention.  "Trust us, we will do what is right," is not a viable model where the government forcibly imprisons an already-vulnerable population.  Especially when there is ample evidence that DHS does not do what is right.  This appears to be another instance where "continuity" with the Bush administration, not "change," is the watchword for Obama's DHS.

Dave Bennion
PREVIOUS STORY:
10-Year Bars Split Up Families
NEXT STORY:
Community Members Fight Detention of High School Graduate with a Mental Disability

COMMENTS (19)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.