Immigration Law

TIMES EDITORIAL FOLLOWS UP ON DETENTION DEATHS STORY

By Greg Siskind

The Times is giving better coverage to problems in the immigration system than most newspapers in the country. And the editorial folks are to be congratulated for regularly letting our leaders know that thoughtful people are paying attention. Here's a key quote from today's editorial commenting on Nina Bernstein's piece:

Congress has failed repeatedly to enact meaningful immigration reform, and the prospects in the next year or so are slim. It can act on this. The government urgently needs to bring the detention system up to basic standards of decency and fairness. That means lifting the veil on detention centers ? particularly the private jails and the state prisons and county jails that take detainees under federal contracts ? and holding them to the same enforceable standards that apply to prisons. It also means designing a system that is not a vast holding pen for ordinary people who pose no threat to public safety, like the 52-year-old tailor, Boubacar Bah.

Full post as published by Greg Siskind's Blog on May 06, 2008 (boomark / email).