Legal Commentary

Report Criticizes U.S. Immigrant Detention Policy

By Jeralyn

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has released its December, 2010 report critical of U.S. detention policy for immigrants. The focus of the report is on ICE’s civil immigration operations. From the Report's Introduction:

the Inter-American Commission is convinced that in many if not the majority of cases, detention is a disproportionate measure and the alternatives to detention programs would be a more balanced means of serving the State’s legitimate interest in ensuring compliance with immigration laws. The IACHR is disturbed by the rapid increase in the number of partnerships with local and state law enforcement for purposes of enforcing civil immigration laws.

The Inter-American Commission finds that ICE has failed to develop an oversight and accountability system to ensure that these local partners do not enforce immigration law in a discriminatory manner by resorting to racial profiling and that their practices do not use the supposed investigation of crimes as a pretext to prosecute and detain undocumented migrants.

The New York Times has more here.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 18, 2011 (boomark / email).