by Lory Rosenberg, AILA Board of Governors member

The emerging evidence of DHS’s disregard and cover-up of immigrant deaths in detention is unconscionable and belongs on page one of everyone’s human rights agenda. Yes, these deaths occurred 2+ years ago, but there has been no meaningful action taken to investigate, prosecute and remove the DHS employees and contract workers responsible for the deaths or who persist in violating the civil and human rights of detainees. As reported by Nina Bernstein in the New York Times (January 10, 2010), documents obtained by the ACLU establish that “officials — some still in key positions — used their role as overseers to cover up evidence of mistreatment, deflect scrutiny by the news media or prepare exculpatory public statements after gathering facts that pointed to substandard care or abuse.”

The Obama administration’s preference for looking forward not back is simply unacceptable in these circumstances. Despite DHS’s current claim that it is dedicated to overhaul and provide greater transparency in its detention system, well-documented reports from the agency’s own Inspector General, Human Rights Watch, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of Syracuse University, and the Constitution Project reveal DHS’s persistent impositionof excessively lengthy detentions, and an apparently endless increase of lawful residents,asylum seekers,
and others with strong ties to the U.S. being detained without regard to or in spite of individual factors. Worse, these reports show that there has been no let up in the practice of “haphazard transfers,” causing some detainees to be moved without notice, with a resulting misplacement of records, loss of access to legal counsel, and, according to the New York Times, a nightmare of “‘errors, delays and confusion for detainees, their families, legal representatives’and the courts.” Such a prevalent level of agency disregard and disorganization inevitably will perpetuate the needless suffering of detainees seeking help from a deficient detainee health care system that places costs above care and covers up its inexcusable mistakes.

Promises of “overhaul” ring empty when the lawless and unaccountable foxes still are standing guard over the same chaotic, mismanaged, and inhumane henhouse. Incredibly, the Obama administration has rehired, “Nina Dozoretz, a longtime manager in the agency’s Division of Immigration Health Services who had won an award for cutting detainee health care costs,” apparently without investigation, and certainly overlooking her claim to have no memory of her involvement in a 2007 conference call to discuss the disposal of Mr. Bah, one of the deceased detainees. No self-imposed DHS “overhaul” of detention purporting to provide detainees with “improved health care” can satisfy the need for redress and responsibility, followed by a robust
regime of transparency and vigilant oversight that is essential to rehabilitate DHS’s lawless image and actual practices in this area. More important, a far greater level of institutionalized accountability and oversight of DHS is critical to protect the lives of detainees and ensure that they are treated with dignity according to law.

All Americans should be outraged by the Sunday New York Times report about how ICE officials schemed to cover up the deaths of detainees in detention. http://bit.ly/6p2xlX. The online edition includes a link to a horrifying video of an ICE detainee, Mr. Boubacar Bah, who, after mysteriously suffering a skull fracture, was handcuffed while writhing in agony on the floor in his own vomit, then locked-up in an isolation cell for 13 hours without medical treatment and, finally, transported to a hospital in a coma where he later died.

It would be one thing if death in ICE detention was a rare occurrence. But, unfortunately, it’s all too common. In a related article, also published Sunday, the Times reports about other ICE detainee deaths which were the result of substandard medical care and abuse. http://bit.ly/6gJlXu.

As I sat down to write this blog, I hoped to pen a stinging piece expressing my anger and calling for a full overhaul of ICE’s detention system, not just more press releases and empty promises. But the New York Times articles speak for themselves —107 people have died in ICE custody since 2003 (not counting the immigrants who were released shortly before death so they wouldn’t be added to the tally). Added to my anger is the revulsion that I feel toward an agency that is not only incompetent to care for those it locks up, but whose bureaucrats conspire to avoid paying detainees’ medical bills and hide from bad publicity, rather than attend to immigrants in their custody. It seems not one of the faceless ICE bureaucrats is ever called to answer for his or her transgressions. Indeed, participating in the abuse and neglect of ICE detainees may have resume value. Just ask Nina Dozoretz, who was the longtime manager of ICE’s Division of Immigration Health Services and Vice President of the Nakamoto Group, a company that, according to the Times, was hired by the Bush administration to monitor ICE detention. Dozoretz reportedly participated in the ICE conference calls where officials debated ways to avoid paying for Boubacar Bah’s medical care, and came up with a scheme to shift the costs to his indigent relatives before he died. Shockingly, she was recently hired by the Obama administration to overhaul the ICE detainee healthcare system (I guess I won’t hold my breath waiting for positive change I can believe in as it relates to ICE health care).
The abuse is not limited to ICE detainees who are unfortunate enough to become ill or injured while in custody. Last month Chris Crane, Vice President of the Detention and Removal Operations of the union representing approximately 7,200 ICE employees who work in detention and removal operations, testified before the U.S. Congress. He described the abuse faced by immigrants detained at facilities run by private contractors and seriously questioned ICE’s will to investigate and police the system.

Frankly, I have read enough articles about abuse and death in ICE detention. There can be no doubt that the system is corrupt to its core. Can you imagine if, instead, the Times had reported that an American had died in Iranian, North Korean, Cuban, or Syrian custody under similar circumstances? We would all be incensed. The Administration would call for heads to roll, impassioned speeches would thunder on the floor of Congress, and the blogs and media pundits would rage. But the cruelty described by the Times is homegrown. It is endemic to the ICE detention system and will continue unless something is done to stop it.

Several months ago homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano and ICE assistant secretary John Morton announced a review of the ICE detention operations with the stated goal of creating a “truly civil” detention system. In light of what we now know, that effort is too little, too late. The ICE detention system is a national disgrace, requiring President Obama to take immediate steps to protect the constitutional, civil, and human rights of ICE detainees, including,

• Suspending ICE’s detention authority by placing it in receivership with the Department of Justice pending a full investigation of the abuse and deaths in detention;
• Ordering a top to bottom review of ICE, in particular its detention and removal operations, with the goal of overhauling the agency so that the human rights of ICE detainees will be respected and the rule of law enforced; and
• Ordering the Department of Justice to commence appropriate civil and criminal investigations of all deaths in ICE detention and pursue all appropriate civil and criminal remedies.

We owe it to the families of the 107 people who died in ICE custody to see to it that the abuse, neglect, and deaths are stopped once and for all. Maybe then they will be able to take comfort in the fact that their loved ones did not die in vain.

Okay, so Lou Dobbs appears on Bill O’Reilly’s show last night. And Dobbs appears the more rational one. It is amazing what a desire to get into politics will do to one’s “uncompromising” standards. Watch it here:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeniRslONVE]

Today the Immigration Policy Center of the American Immigration Council, along with the Center for American Progress issued a report confirming what many people of rationale mind (including the vast majority of Americans) already knew–It would be an economic disaster to deport 12 million people. The loss of this vital economic element would cause a loss to the U.S. Economy of over 2 TRILLION dollars over the next 10 years. Hey, I think that is real money!

Raising The Floor For American Workers, written by UCLA Professor Dr. Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, highlights the economic reality of the the undocumented population in the United States, how tied in they are to the economic engine of the United States, and what an economic nightmare we, as Americans, would deal with if we followed the failed deportation-only policies advocated by immigration restrictionists.

More importantly, Dr. Hinojosa-Ojeda found that not only is a comprehensive reform of our immigration laws (involving BOTH a legalization component AND a an actual workable immigrant visa plan) an economic necessity, it will actually raise the wage floor for all American workers. Frankly, its about time someone looked at the numbers here and ran verifiable scenarios, and did not just play around with easily manipulable census data.

Now, do you think anyone in Congress will read this? Will it change any minds? Ultimately, it is only us, those that understand the human cost of bad immigration policies, that can convince people reluctant to fix our broken immigration system on humanitarian grounds, that it is in our own ECONOMIC interest to makes these necessary changes. Let’s get to it.

By Deborah Notkin, AILA Past President

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the Gutierrez bill is. While there are many excellent provisions on important components of immigration reform, especially family unity and legalization, the employment immigration provisions are overwhelmingly negative and geared to eliminate the employers from having any reasonable input on the specific types of foreign employees that are required in an evolving economy. The overarching provision is the establishment of a “Commission” that would determine U.S. immigration policy (numbers and categories) pertaining to temporary and permanent workers. A commission of seven “experts” would report to both houses of Congress annually the types and number of workers that could enter the U. S. Unless both houses of Congress acted to block them (a rarity in today’s world), the Commission’s “recommendations” would become the law of the land.

There are a number of reasons why substituting Congress with a commission is a bad idea. First, we don’t have the statistical evidence available to make good measurements on an annual basis. Second, government commissions in DC overwhelmingly end up becoming unelected political entities, with their own agendas, often exceeding their original mission. Third, a politicized commission on such a controversial issue would be especially problematic because it would not be accountable directly to voters as are elected representatives. In a debate on the Commission concept that I attended in New York, proponents were struggling to find even a few examples of Beltway government commissions that worked and did not become politicized.

While the Gutierrez bill should be commended for including provisions requiring employers to take responsibility for utilizing ethical recruiters and providing a few exemptions from the employment based quota for certain types of professionals, it generally negates the legitimacy of corporate needs and lacks any concept of the global economy and the international, competitive personnel market.

Most egregious is the idea of bringing in a lesser skilled workforce through a sort of “hiring hall” lottery system that would eliminate employers entirely from the selection process. Foreign workers would be placed in a database and assigned to employers based on some computer’s or bureaucrat’s idea of a match. It reminds one of the unfortunate migrants who are day workers standing outside waiting to be randomly hired. Here, they can just stand in their own countries being assigned to an employer they may not have chosen if given the choice.

Additional provisions would eliminate the ability of employers to use entry level wages for entry level temporary workers. Forcing employers to pay foreign nationals more than their U.S. worker counterparts is totally absurd. Is this how we think America will benefit from the many foreign nationals who have just graduated from, among other fields, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathmatics, programs? And of course, the unworkable cap on H-1B temporary professional workers in a healthy economy is totally ignored, evidently to be left to the gang of seven commissioners.

It appears that Congressman Gutierrez put his heart and soul into legalization and family unity but left the employment provisions to be drafted by the most anti-employer parties in this debate. Much is borrowed from the Durbin-Grassley proposed H-1B and L-1B provisions and the Economic Policy Institute’s piece on immigration, which starts out by labeling all employers using foreign workers as participants in indentured servitude.

I have only highlighted a few of the egregious provisions that promise to sink an otherwise good piece of legislation. And this does not serve anyone who sincerely wants to find a solution to the human tragedy faced by undocumented migrants in the United States.

Yesterday the U.S. Transportation and Security Administration issued new regulations that passengers from 14 countries would receive a “full body pat-down and physical inspection of property” before they can board a plane headed to the U.S. http://bit.ly/64r5cQ. The countries include Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria, which are considered “state sponsors of terrorism” as well as those from “countries of interest”—including Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen.

Do you feel safer today?

Maybe it’s time the U.S. took a lesson from the Israeli airport security playbook. Anyone who has ever traveled in and out of that country, whose airport, passengers, and planes have long been a prized target for terrorists, knows that serious security is not the result of knee jerk reactive measures, but of careful study and planning. Last week, the Toronto Star published an article about the effectiveness of Israeli airport security which has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. http://bit.ly/8npJs7.
According the Star, the Israeli system focuses on behavior, not race, age, or other physical attributes. “To us, it doesn’t matter if he’s black, white, young or old” said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy who has worked with the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world. According to Sela the Israelis focus on behavior, not appearance. Airport security officers look for nervousness or other signs of “distress” in travelers, who are required to pass through several seemingly benign levels of security when arriving at the airport. First, security officers greet the travelers at a roadside check at the entrance to the airport. Once they’ve parked passengers enter the airport terminal after passing guards outside who are trained to observe odd behavior. Once in the terminal, passengers are greeted by a trained interviewer who takes the traveler’s passport and ticket, and asks a series of questions such as, “Who has packed your luggage? Has it left your side?” After check-in the passengers then pass through the “hard” levels of security; scanners and screeners. Then they are off to the secure area of the terminal to shop, grab a snack, or relax in the lounge before they board their flight. The entire process from parking to gate takes about 25 minutes.

The difference is that the Israelis focus on behavior, not appearance or objects. “First, it’s fast — there’s almost no line” says Sela. That’s because they’re not looking for liquids, they’re not looking at your shoes. They’re not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you. Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes … and that’s how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys.”

Compare this to the new TSA regulations which apparently will require the full-body pat down of an accomplished Pakistani physician who has worked and taught at a renown medical institution in the U.S. for many years, or a 95 year old Nigerian woman in a wheel chair (including physical inspection of the wheel chair), but not a 23 year old from, say, Australia, New Zealand, or even the U.S. Does this really make sense? If nothing else, the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh, a gulf war veteran, taught us that terrorists who would harm the U.S. are not limited to any particular nationality, ethnicity, or religion.

After 9/11 the U.S. has treated all visitors—including tourists, professional workers, and green card holders—as suspects, rather than guests. In the process we have dissuaded many talented foreign nationals from coming here. I fear the new TSA regulations, which appear to focus on objective criteria rather than suspicious behavior, will do little to increase security but instead discourage the best and brightest from coming to America to contribute to our social fabric.

The foiled Christmas Day attack was certainly a wake-up call. We need a more effective system to protect our citizens and airports. But those charged with our homeland security need to focus on building a system that really works, or, as the Star describes it, “a system that that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.”