DEPT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION CUSTOMS AND ENFORCEMENT, & PRIVATE DETENTION CENTERS

Immigration reform is one of the most complicated and contentious sociopolitical issues in the United States today. Although the United States is a nation of immigrants, immigrants contribute to the nation’s rich cultural tapestry, and immigrants are an instrumental part of the US economy, there is a general ambivalence about who is welcomed and granted citizenship. In The Infiltrators, we witness how a country that once offered refuge to poor and persecuted European immigrant settlers is now clenching its fist against immigrants, refugees, and asylees from Latin America and Asia seeking an opportunity to live the American Dream (Portes and Rumbaught,1996). These migrants are an instrumental part of our economy (Sherman et al., 2019) and the industry of monitoring and managing their migration is booming (Dayen, 2020).

Following the attacks on September 11, 2001, former President George W. Bush passed the Homeland Security Act in 2002 which culminated in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The relatively new department began operations in 2003 and is composed of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Upon its creation, DHS signified a restructuring of government infrastructure and absorbed 22 additional federal departments and agencies. These organization's mission statement, according to its website is to “secure the nation from the many threats we face” (DHS.gov). Within this mission, ICE is responsible for monitoring and managing migration in the US. From its conception, this department understood its mission as one rooted in defense, and today consists of detention centers, county and city jails, and privately owned detention centers used to hold undocumented migrants awaiting an immigration trial or deportation. Over the last few decades, the amount of detention centers has increased exponentially (Kassie, 2019) and currently the U.S. has the largest immigration incarceration system in the world with approximately 200 detention centers across the country. Although DHS is a federal organization, private corporations such as The Geo Group, Corecivic, and Unisys have accumulated billions of dollars in profit from the detention of immigrants (Public Citizen).

Scholars assert that there are race, class, and gender dimensions to immigration enforcement. For instance,Golash-Boza (2016) found the immigration enforcement patterns mirror prison labor exploitation patterns that subjugate Black and Latinx US citizens. Hence, although women migrate to the US at higher rates than men (American Immigration Council), “nearly 90 percent of deportees are men, and over 97 percent of deportees are Latin American or Caribbean” (Golash-Boza, 2016). Similar to policing patterns of the Black and Latinx community in the nation, immigrants are often detained for probable cause or minor offenses such as traffic violations, writing a bad check, disorderly conduct, or not having documentation. According toTRAC Immigration, “half of the 95,085 immigrants targeted by ICE for possible criminal deportation in fiscal 2015 did not have criminal convictions at all.”

Immigrants are often detained for several years, determined by the length of time their case takes to be processed.Golash-Boza (2012) states that the current system of immigration detention violates these procedural citizen protections in three critical ways: (1) detainees bear the burden of proof; (2) the state can deny bond hearings; and (3) the judge and the jailer are sometimes the same. A lack of consistency regarding immigration trial protocols contribute to the lengthy detention sentences. The DHS justifies the detention of noncitizens through the original orientation of “defense” and as a measure necessary to ensure migrants adhere to immigration customs, attend immigration trials, and leave the country when ordered to do so.

ICE is under contractual obligation to private owners to fill or pay for a minimum number of immigration detention beds at specific facilities and incentivizes the agency to fill those beds (SPLC). The longer the detention time, the more profit is made by the private detention centers. According to theACLU, taxpayers pay “a daily cost of $164 per detainee per day, and more than $2 billion a year.” Detention centers obtain additional profit from their detainees’ labor exploitation. The detainees work for approximately $1.00 a day and additional family visitation time (Elinson, 2018). The detainees accept the work compensation primarily for their extended family and friends visitation time. Additional profits accrue when the detention centers seek ways to cut a profit from telephone services, food, health and safety financed by tax-payers.

aBROWARD TRANSITIONAL CENTER

TheBroward Transitional Center is a short-term, non-criminal, low-security detention center managed and operated by The GEO Group and financed through U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). The facility was opened in Pompano Beach, FL in 2001 and has maintained the American Correctional Association (ACA) accreditation. The two-story center was designed to blend in with the community setting and to provide privacy, separation by gender, and full support space for the residents and staff. It features a kitchen building, expanded medical clinic and courtroom areas as well as a 14,000 square foot office building for client use. The facility houses 700 detainees, 595 of the detainees are men and the 105 are women (O’Matz, 2013). Among them are teens transferred from the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s custody at 18, pregnant mothers, the elderly, and asylum-seekers with no criminal offenses (O’Matz, 2013).

Broward Transitional Center received a $20 million dollar contract through the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement to detain immigrants (O’Matz, 2013). ICE has the legal obligation to adequately care for Broward Transitional Center detainees by providing necessities like food, shelter, clothing, toiletries, recreation, access to information to fight their immigration cases, contact with loved ones and attorneys, and medical and mental health care. Unfortunately, the Broward detainees are routinely denied their basic rights. According to theSouthern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Broward Transitional Center’s conditions of confinement include inadequate medical care, inadequate mental health care, and inadequate accommodations for detainees with disabilities. In 2019, the detainees submitted a list of grievances to detention center officials. According to theSPLC, their complaints included “a lack of bilingual staff members, monitored phone calls and a work program that only allowed participants to earn $1 to $2 a day”. The SPLC asserts that the oversight mechanisms used at Broward are little more than a checkbox and that none of the mechanisms ICE employs to oversee its facilities adequately correct systemic deficiencies.

One of the aggrieved concerns expressed by detainees was the lack of legitimate protocols and the subjective discretion to parole individuals or release them on bond or on their own recognizance. Because Broward houses non-criminal detainees all of them are eligible for parole or bond (O’Matz, 2013). Incarcerating immigrants who pose no threat to national security or public safety violates the 2011 legislation that contends that immigration enforcement efforts are to focus on “suspected terrorist, violent criminals, repeat offenders and gang members” (O’Matz, 2013). According to the National Immigration Youth Alliance, there were over 100 instances of people being detained despite meeting the low-priority threshold. Accordingly, most had no criminal records or past deportations, were DREAM ACT eligible youth, or were waiting for their refugee and asylum status. The unjust discretionary cause of detention and deportation, lengthy detention between trial and deportations, and inadequate conditions of confinement are what prompted Marti and Viri to infiltrate Broward Transitional Center and to draw attention to an unjust immigration system.

IMMIGRATION ADVOCACY AND YOUTH ACTIVISM

The National Immigrant Youth Alliance (NIYA) is an undocumented, youth-led national organization with approximately 27 chapters across the nation. The youth activists are collectively organized and advocate for justice and equality for immigrants. Their core values are to empower, educate, and escalate: NIYA.

Empower: We are undocumented and unafraid. We realize that our greatest power comes from accepting ourselves and realizing that we, as the people most affected, are the ones that need to be at the forefront of our movement. We are committed to making sure that all undocumented youth realize the potential and power they have as undocumented youth, to embrace their identity and to demand nothing less than equality.

Educate: The core of our work not only relies in our methods but also our stories and pedagogy that are embedded in the history of social movements. While we understand the “how” and the “what” of our work, we also need to be aware of the “why.” An essential aspect of NIYA is to learn from past social movements successes and be able to incorporate and innovate that wisdom into today’s pursuit of justice. Escalate: Throughout the years of restless organizing across this country, undocumented youth have claimed a place within the historical immigrant rights movement we must now take the lead. We have reached a point where lobbying alone is not adequate to accomplish our mission. We strongly believe that our movement needs to escalate and we will use mindful and intentional strategic acts of civil disobedience to be effective. NIYA.

Marti and Viri are youth activists and community organizers that work with Claudio and Omar to infiltrate the Broward Transitional Center and organize a hunger strike in an attempt to bring awareness to the unjust conditions and the broken immigration system. Both Marti and Viri are DACA (Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals) and DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) recipients. These policies provided temporary relief from deportation (deferred action) and work authorization to certain young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children (AIC). They had to meet certain guidelines to keep their DACA status. The program is not permanent and requires that the recipients meet certain conditions and renew their status every two years (AIC).