The Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, more commonly known as ICE, has seen major mobilization under the Trump Administration. With raids on cities and workplaces, the tens of thousands of detainees coming into the system are being funneled into specific locations: ICE detention centers. On their homepage, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement claims that these centers are a temporary holding place for “aliens [in order] to secure their presence for immigration proceedings or removal from the U.S”. Also, that those being held are “those that ICE determines are a public safety or flight risk during the custody determination process”. Although this is what the government body claims, other evidence has undermined this assertion. Indeed, the evidence supports allegations that the centers foster horrendous conditions, humanitarian crises, and abuse.
With deportation quotas pushing officers to round up as many suspected illegal immigrants as possible, more than 70,000 individuals are now being held within detention centers, causing massive overcrowding (Detention Watch Network). Crowding within the prison walls, controlled by a department that has little to no Congressional oversight, begets myriad issues in turn. The Texas detention center of Dilley is a microcosm for the allegations of inhumane conditions surrounding ICE detention centers across the country. Mothers and fathers are being rounded up across the country, as far as New York, and sent to Texas, more than a thousand miles away. More, in such cases as the children (including infants) are sent to the center as well, they will still be facing extreme conditions (CNN). The overcrowding continues as officers fail to legally deport detainees quickly, and so–in centers like Fort Bliss, Texas–tent cities begin to form within the camps, where the floor floods with a slurry of sewage, children atrophy from rotten food, and misbehaviors are thrown into solitary confinement. As the conditions worsen, ICE officers inside feel the pressure to deport, and reports have surfaced of a final tactic: violence. With beatings, threats of breaking up families, and even sexual violence, claims are that officers extort detainees so that they will sign “voluntary” deportation forms and thin out the prisons (Activists Without Borders).
There is extensive data to show Immigration and Customs Enforcement have tried to limit access to detention centers. This includes precluding or setting hurdles even for Congressional oversight. (Neguse v. ICE, D.D.C.). The logical reason would be to keep knowledge of what is occurring in their detention centers hushed up. With allegations of mounting abuses, it is clear that ICE wants the facts kept behind the prison walls. Still, voices are speaking out: After a year-long investigation, Senator Jon Ossoff uncovered more than 1,000 credible human rights abuses happening in ICE detention centers, shedding light on some of the facilities’ most terrible abuses (Senate). Congressional oversight in this area is essential to documenting abuses, and instituting measures to prevent such abuses from continuing, in addition to preventing similar abuses in the future.
Still, we must always remain on the offensive. ICE may call detainees “threats to public safety”, and there very well may be people who are dangerous taken into ICE custody. However, it is evident that many are simply individuals who are generally law abiding and are mothers, fathers, and children with no criminal history or who have worked and contributed to society. Even if non-citizens they have rights under the Constitution.
Whether people are proven criminals or not, they are human beings. Conditions in detention centers should never be inhumane. To ensure this, we cannot allow our own government to avoid accountability or to lie to our faces, or to cover up their actions; for we, too, have a right, a right to truth.
Author’s Note: So, this is, quite obviously, an examination of the attempts by the Trump Administration’s ICE to cover up misdeeds and the administration’s contention that anyone held in detention centers are dangerous or deserving of this treatment. It should be stated not just here, but 10,000 times over that any human right abuse is unacceptable, and no matter what the perceived crime may be no human should have to sustain such inequity. Of course, despite the abusive treatment I’ve already described, without proper oversight we may only know a small amount of what is occurring in these detention centers. With the security force being made up of ICE officers who may never self report, and with current department policy being that no congressman can inspect a detention center without a week’s notice in advance, it is clear that there is likely so much that they are trying to keep hidden from the public eye. Nevertheless, I believe that it is the solemn duty of every American to remain ever vigilant and outspoken against this kind of police action. The mothers, fathers, and children being housed in these unhygienic, overcrowded, abusive camps deserve it no less than any human being, whether or not an American citizen, and the dignity and respect they do deserve is being stripped from them, and all evidence of misdeed hidden. People of conscience should speak out in the name of common humanity and should not tolerate human rights abuses in ICE detention centers.
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