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Thanks to reports on the secretive system, particularly those by Nina Bernstein in The New York Times, folks who were paying attention learned that detainees were being locked up and forgotten and denied access to lawyers and their families. They languished, sickened and died without medical attention.
And speaking of the New York Times, please note that it's one of the few MSM newspapers that have published anything on this issue. Others include the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Ditto, radio and television - even among the few progressive outlets. For example, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow have commented on immigration matters from time to time, but have never, ever, not once, tackled the detention issue.
What is the Obama Administration doing about this outrage? Is our President still committed to his campaign promises to "secure our borders, fix our dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy, increase the number of legal immigrants in order to keep families together, and bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows."
Well, the President has told us comprehensive immigration reform will have to wait until next year. But, meanwhile, the Obama administration has refused to promulgate regulations that would require immigration detention facilities to adhere to basic standards of care. It rejected a petition by former detainees and civil rights organizations requesting a rule-making procedure in the wake of public reports detailing the humanitarian crisis in the facilities.
The new overseer of ICE, John Morton, said he wanted to turn immigration detention 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 announced reforms include creating offices and advisory boards to focus on medical care and the management of centers, reviewing contracts with private prisons and local jails, and installing managers at the 23 largest centers to make sure complaints are heard and problems fixed.
He said Centers would face random inspections. Community groups and immigrant advocates would be invited to offer advice and comment. And the government would stop sending parents with children to a notorious prison near Austin, Texas, as it seeks alternatives to the Bush-era tactic of putting whole families behind bars.
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano told the Christian Science Monitor that the administration is not waiting for Congress to revamp immigration detention programs. "These major changes in detention ... will result in a system that deals with detainees in an efficient, transparent, and humane manner," she said.
Doubtless we should find some encouragement in these proposed changes. At least, our government has acknowledged that we have a problem. But don't break out the champagne just yet. These kinds of promises have been made before, and nothing's changed. My online friend, Mark Dow, wrote a book on the subject - American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons. That was in 2004, but what he described could have happened this morning.
And even if the DHS is now serious, the changes they're proposing will take many years to achieve.
Maybe it will help that Congress is also getting into the act:
Legislation has been introduced in both the House and the Senate that would change the laws governing immigration detention and increase oversight and enforceability of detention standards. But given the lawmakers' cluttered calendar, don't hold your breath waiting.
Meanwhile, the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse are using the current debate on health care reform to whip up more of their toxic brew. Daphne Eviatar of The Washington Independent reports that, "As the heat gets turned up on the health care reform debate, anti-immigrant activists are using the issue to whip up fear and anger toward immigrants, portraying them as a costly and burdensome drain on any taxpayer-supported U.S. health care system. Angry questions about illegal immigrants getting health care at town hall meetings across the country have put many lawmakers on the defensive."
Why are we not surprised?
And why don't the American people know more about what's being done in our name?
There are a number of explanations, but they all come down to power, money, politics, and fear. Immigration has become one of the third rails of American politics. With their principles totally eclipsed by the 2010 mid-term elections, politicians are terrified by the tsunami of jingoistic populism currently sweeping our country. (Witness, the "death panels" town halls.)
