But “nicer” ones. Is there ANYTHING this guy cannot find money for? He must have a money tree
Pledging more oversight and accountability, the Obama administration will overhaul the nation’s Immigration detention system and transform it from one reliant on scattered local jails and private prisons to a centralized one specifically for civil detainees, officials announced Thursday.
The reforms are aimed at greater control over a system that houses 33,000 detainees a day and has been criticized for inhumane conditions and for failing to provide health care that may have prevented many of the 90 deaths that have occurred since 2003.
“With these reforms, ICE will move away from our present decentralized, jail-oriented approach to a system that is wholly designed for and based on our civil detention needs,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Assistant Secretary John Morton said. “The population that we detain is different than the traditional population that is detained in a prison or a jail setting.”
The federal Immigration agency plans to review the use of 350 local jails, state prisons and private facilities. Within five years, officials said, detainees without criminal records likely would be held in fewer, less restrictive locations.
Morton also announced that the agency will stop sending families to the controversial T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Texas and instead hold them in a facility in Pennsylvania. The Texas facility, which will still house women, opened in 2006 and faced lawsuits over substandard living conditions. A settlement resulted in changes to how children are treated.
Immigrant rights advocates welcomed the changes but said there is still no clear policy on how detention facilities will be penalized when problems are found.
“We are encouraged that the administration is taking a hard look at what has traditionally been a dark spot in our Immigration system,” said Karen Tumlin, an attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. “However, only time will tell if the reforms announced today amount to lasting change or simply creative repackaging of prior policies.”
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