Artículo

The Math of Immigration Detention

The Math of Immigration Detention

Publicado el 31 de agosto de 2012
en National Immigration Forum, Practicla solutions for immigrants and for America. August 2012, Washington. 
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One symptom of our broken immigration system is the exorbitant spending wasted on detaining hundreds of thousands of immigrants annually. Physical detention, as costly and severe as it is, should only be used in limited circumstances, such as  for  holding  immigrants whose release would pose a serious danger to the community.  For the majority of individuals currently in immigration detention, the government could use less expensive alternatives to detention to serve their needs. Billions of dollars could be saved if the government  reduced its overreliance on detention and properly  allocated resources towards more humane and cost-effective alternative methods of monitoring.

 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), located in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has begun prioritizing enforcement against immigration violators who pose a danger to the community, rather than using limited resources to target people who are simply trying to make a living. However, ICE’s use of discretion has been limited so far, and resources are still used to detain and deport aspiring citizens who pose no risk.  Wise use of prosecutorial discretion is a huge opportunity to reshape our vast immigration detention system, yet the opportunity is being squandered.Despite a more focused approach by DHS to immigration enforcement, the White House continues to ask for billions of dollars for the detention operations of ICE. For the Fiscal Year that begins October 1, 2012 (Fiscal Year 2013), DHS and the White House requested $1.959 billion for DHS Custody Operations.

This funding level would amount to $5.4 million per day spent on immigration detention. The current cost to detain an immigrant is approximately $164 per day at a capacity of 32,800 daily detention beds. Congress would spend even more.Many of these detention dollars flow to enormous private prison corporations that stand to reap significant profits when more and more immigrants are detained.Detention should not be used as the default approach  to enforcing immigration laws.  Less wasteful and equally effective alternatives to detention exist. They range in cost from as low as 30 cents to $14 a day. If only individuals convicted of serious crimes were detained and less expensive alternative methods were used to monitor the rest of the currently detained population, taxpayers could save more than $1.6 billion per year—over an 80% reduction in annual costs.  An examination of the numbers makes it clear—the dollars spent to detain immigrants do not add up to something that makes sense.? 

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Clasificación
Sin dato

País

Estados Unidos

Temática general
[Vigilancia migratoria en Estados Unidos][Migración]

Temática específica
[57][130]



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