Abstract

Excerpted From: Isaí Estévez, A Case for Community-based Alternatives to Immigration Detention, 64 Arizona Law Review 1185 (Winter 2022) (228 Footnotes) (Full Document)

 

IsaíEstévezThe United States immigration detention system is dehumanizing, expensive, ineffective, and teeming with daily, well-documented abuses. Instead of continuing these harms or creating “alternative” programs that merely impose more dehumanizing and abusive requirements, the U.S. government should invest in holistic, community-based alternatives to immigration detention.

Noncitizens in detention are extremely vulnerable to COVID-19 outbreaks as conditions in immigration detention have proven to be incompatible with prevention measures. Even before the outbreak of the global pandemic, conditions in immigration detention facilities were inhumane and inadequate-- detention numbers have exponentially increased in recent years and many facilities are overcrowded. Unfortunately, in response, the U.S. government has invested in steadily growing its current Alternatives to Detention (“ATD”) program, which, unlike a community-based program, operates as an Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (“ISAP”). This program includes monitored surveillance by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) or private contractors, with a combination of randomized home and office visits and inhumane technology like ankle monitors to track migrants. ISAP consists of increased surveillance and dehumanizing requirements that are at odds with an immigration system that should provide refuge to asylum seekers and migrants in need. Instead, with the end of the COVID-19 pandemic nowhere in sight, the U.S. government should take an opportunity to invest in the development of a holistic, community-based alternative to detention program like those that are already at work in some communities in the United States and worldwide. A community-based program will be more humane, effective, and cost-efficient than the current immigration detention system and ISAP. The pandemic provides a perfect opportunity to widely test a community-based program and establish an alternative to detention that can become a permanent part of the U.S. immigration system.

Part I of this Note contextualizes the rise in both the size and cost of immigration detention in the past few decades, explaining some of the constitutional, humanitarian, and health concerns with immigration detention and how they have been exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Part II focuses on the use of Alternatives to Detention, specifically ISAP, ICE's primary ATD program, and identifies the concerns and shortcomings of ISAP as an alternative to immigration detention. Part III then demonstrates that community-based programs will be more humane, effective, and cost-efficient than current detention and ATD programs. With the public and global pressure for alternatives to immigration detention in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, now is the perfect time to invest in an alternative that can serve as a long-term solution to an immigration detention system that has had major health and humanitarian concerns since its inception.

[. . .]

The U.S. government should invest in the development of holistic, community-based alternatives to immigration detention. A community-based program will be more humane, effective, and cost-efficient than the current immigration detention system and the increased surveillance and dehumanizing requirements of ISAP. With the end of the COVID-19 pandemic nowhere in sight, the U.S. government should take the opportunity to invest in the development of a holistic, community-based ATD program like those that are already being implemented in some communities in the United States and worldwide. With the public and global pressure for alternatives to immigration detention in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, now is the perfect time to invest in an alternative that can serve as a long-term solution to an immigration detention system that has had major health and humanitarian concerns since its inception.


J.D. Candidate, University of Arizona James E. Rogers of Law, Class of 2023.