Another View: Detention Centers Overhaul Welcomed

Summary

---

The Obama administration last week announced major steps to overhaul immigration detention. It is good news, considering how bad the system has gotten, having grown quickly and without oversight into a sprawling network of ill-managed prisons rife with reports of abuse, injury and preventable death.

The head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, John Morton, said he wanted to turn immigration detention, which holds about 32,000 people a day, and 400,000 a year, into a "truly civil detention system," one focused on safely and humanely holding people accused of civil immigration violations until they are deported or released. The current conglomeration of private, for-profit lockups and state and county jails is run more like a system to warehouse and punish dangerous criminals, which immigration violators overwhelmingly are not.

See the full content of this document

Extract

---

Another View: Detention Centers Overhaul Welcomed

The announced reforms include creating offices and advi...

See the full content of this document

---