JHR 425 -IMMIGRATION DETENTION CENTERS HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS AND ALTERNATIVES

P a g e | 1

IMMIGRATION DETENTION CENTERS: HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS AND

ALTERNATIVES

1. INTRODUCTION TO IMMIGRATION DETENTION

Immigration detention therefore refers to holding of immigrants who are in the country of their

own volition or through an application for asylum, the holders of expired visas and or those who

have violated immigration laws as they wait for deportation. Over the past few decades, the

practice of immigration detention has grown; the USA, for instance, detains immigrant for

hundreds of thousands of individuals per year. The increase in imprisonment of immigrants has

brought about an increase of human rights problems.

One the greatest issues that hound most detention centers is that of poor and indecent facilities

for detainees. Below are some of the public accounts of overcrowding, poor diet, no health care

provision and inadequate legal representation. Detention in general is not healthy for the

detainees more so for asylum seekers who are escaping violence and persecution. These

problems are worsened by situations of long-term and not time-bound detention where some of

the immigrants may spend months, if not years, in detention awaiting the determination of their

cases.

Also, non-custodial measures are scarcely ever used. For example, putting the immigrants under

a supervisory release into communities, case workers’ periodic supervision of the immigrants and

delivering of community support services to ensure that the immigrants attend legal processes in

non-restrictive and cheaper means. And as compared to massive imprisonment schemes, these

community-based alternatives are less of a human rights abuse.

P a g e | 2

To redress these detention related wrongs, the human rights activists have recommended the

following policies. Such one is extension of case management programs as a way to decrease

reliance on imprisonment. Another area of work is the improvement of supervisory activities and

the external audit of the status of existing at the time temporary detention facilities. The

opponents have however been saying that detention should be selectively applied, if at all,

perhaps where the probabilities of the aliens being a menace to the society or a flight risk. That

would not be a small victory for human rights if we transition towards this harm minimization

model of detention.

The present policies of state immigration detention raise legal or human rights issues, financial

concerns, and ethical dilemmas. By concentrating on the detention reform particularly on options

available and, limiting the detention to certain cases, the countries can come up with improved,

less penal and humanitarian ways of addressing the problem of the migrants. This progressive

polices among others are some of the items that scholars in immigration and human rights law

and practitioners hold as an emergency to be dealt with.

a) Definition and purpose of immigration detention

Immigration detention is detention of a person considered to be an immigration offender or a

person who has no legal justification to be present in any country waiting for a decision of the

case or deportation. Domestic laws empower the states to allow detention with a view of

deporting the irregular migrants. At present, approximately sixty percent of the states globally

have provisions that permit migrant detention and these are the United States, United Kingdom,

Australia and a number of other countries from Asia and the Middle East, Africa and Latin

America. The aim here is to ensure that such persons, who have been granted removal orders, do

not disappear into the community unlawfully and thus detention is utilized as a method of

P a g e | 3

enforcement of immigration laws. In detaining migrants, states believe that it will be convenient

for them to solve cases, arrange removals, and prevent migrants from using other unlawful tracks

as they are to sort migrants in accordance with their economic or security risks. Detention may

also be linked to criminal justice system with regard to some of the countries where entry or

staying in the country without valid documents is considered as a misdemeanor or a criminal

offence rather than an administrative offence. However, there have been raised certain essential

critical concerns of human rights problems related to use of detention, more so of the asylum

seekers and stateless persons. Detainees have been criticized for escalating worldwide, to an

unnecessary extent and said to be more penal than what was needed and scholars maintaining

that stated policy goals for example in immigration control may be pursued more cheaply and in

a manner that is more friendly to the migrants’ rights.

b) Historical context and global trends

Immigration detention has its origin which can be associated with immigration in the word. To

an extent these authorities for admitting or excluding foreigners emerged a little at a time when

states were being established and boundaries were being drawn as in the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries the systems for detaining, processing and sometimes removing unauthorized arrivals

also evolved at this time. Hence, immigration detention emerged not from a premeditated disdain

for human rights, but from identified administrative needs and nationalist selfishness.

But by the late twentieth century human rights and globalization brought many aspects of

immigration detention into question despite having sophisticated systems of detaining

immigrants. Especially the increasing internationalization of markets, information and at least to

some extent culture led to more open borders as the after WWII set up human rights regime

ethically problematized detention of migrants for an indeterminate period without trial. However,

P a g e | 4

countervailing forces persisted between the focus on the bureaucratic and security aspects of

borders and the emergence of the new standards of ‘humane detention’.

This tension, however, was particularly heightened in the 1990s and the early 2000s for a

number of reasons. In the first sense, global displacement crises expanded the migration from the

less-developed countries to the developed ones and the international smuggling and trafficking

networks profited from the desperation. Similarly, global insecurity for example; terrorism

boosted perceived immigration threats and foreigners’ encroachment apprehensions. Nationalist-

populist responses to both economic and cultural globalization also developed a pressure for still

harder immigration policies in many states. This storm was too much and strong for the detention

structures, and encouraged systematic rights violation including overcrowd, concealment of

abuses and arbitrary deportations which in return led to increased condemnation.

Subsequent years have also seen the COVID pandemic even further deepening this status quo

by raising the calamity of medical abuse in jam-packed detention centers. That, too, has given

rise to some other ad hoc decisions such as parole releases. However, maintaining such policy

reforms is another matter and is dependent on whether COVID remains an enforcer of change for

the benefit of the reform campaigns against the stripping of human rights of immigrants via

immigration detention. In any case, the historical development of international relations as well

as of national governmental policies will continue to shape this vibrant and constantly changing

policy area.

c) Types of immigration detention facilities

Immigrants within the US immigration processes are detained in different types of premises,

owning to their status as foreigners. These facilities range in an aspect of their usage, setting and

P a g e | 5

in the status of the individuals detained. Immigration prisons or/and detention centers are the

most often mentioned facilities, and detain people with immigration trials to determine if they

are legally allowed to stay in the country. But there are other types of detention centers as well:

For instance, immigrant family detention centers keep together immigrants’ parents and children

waiting for their immigration hearing. Family detention centers which are currently operational

have also been under a lot of pressure from human rights campaigners for the prison like

conditions which are deemed to be unsuitable for children. In addition, temporary border stations

are of Customs and Border Protection agencies that involve detaining aliens who are unlawful

within the border after they have been apprehended including by using the immigration

localization theory. Unaccompanied children who get to the US without a parent, guardian or

relative have been placed in ORR operated shelters that some have characterized as having

inconsistent standards of care. Local jails which are operated by state governments through

contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Intergovernmental Service

Agreements are also used in immigration detention. The attributes to center type include medical

treatment, mental health and time out of cell, telephone and legal; the conditions of detention

also vary according to the category of the center. The differences between the types of the

detention facilities are connected with discourses concerning whether detention is a penal

function or if it is just a kind of ‘sorting out’ where one receives his or her right to legal status

from the system. There is value in discerning the differences between various detention centers

so as not commit oversimplification in ascertaining to what degree the present immigration

detention system transgresses fundamental human rights. While apprehension of immigrants may

be for administrative purposes in the legal point of view, the problems of the situations and the

P a g e | 6

indefinite detention that may come with it raise question with regard to the quality of civil

liberties provided to aliens.

d) Key stakeholders and their roles

Various actors in society are players who help build the immigration detention system include

Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE and Customs and Border Protection or CBP are

bureaus that participate in the arrest, detention, and deportation of aliens or immigrants. The

bureau has no legal grounds to be in the United States. Some of their duties as provided by the

Act are arresting suspects, making raids, detaining suspects, dealing with removal processes, and

deportations and removals. While on the other hand, there are those agencies that refer to

formulation of policies and regulations on immigration enforcement and detention, such as the

Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

It is also worthy to point out that, there are corporate prison systems managing immigrant

detention centers, which are offered contracts by ICE. Their main objective is to realize good

revenues which they realize through cost reduction measures and guaranteeing full occupancy of

the institutions that they administer. From activist organizations involved in immigration

activities, there are tracking and evaluation of the status of arrests as well as attempts at policy

change, some of which may involve lawsuits, appeals, or media campaigns. Some of the key

advocacy organization include ACLU, Amnesty International, Southern Poverty Law Center,

Detention Watch Network. The following organizations to campaigns; promote human rights,

record and fight cases of abuse, maintain accountability and reduce the practice of detentions.

The specific roles of lawyers and legal aid agencies can also be seen in terms of detention and

deportation where they represent migrant. Detained migrants have visitation programs, hotlines,

P a g e | 7

money for purchase from the commissary, social services, with the assistance of charities. At the

same time, health care workers and the contractors of private health services deplore the poor

provision of physical and mental health treatment to detainees. It is the target of those social

workers to make sure detains receive what they require once they are released in society. In all

these categories, there is a looming issue of inadequate resource to meet the new complexities of

detention arising from enhanced and harsh immigration laws exercising toll on the detainee’s

population. Altogether, the relations existing between such interested, empowered and, in

different ways, positioned subjects constitute the formation of the immigration detention

processes, environments and outcomes.

e) Legal basis for immigration detention

Immigration detention law in countries of the world refers to domestic law and international

requirement and standards. The detainment and admission policies in a country are prerogative

of that state therefore it is within the rights of the German state to detain illegal immigrants.

However, it has to be born in mind that exercise of the detention powers has to be within the

general principles of the legality. The international standards of detention governed by Article 9

of the international covenant on Civil and Political Rights require that the detention have to be

provided for within the domestic legislation and has to be conducted in compliance with the

international human right law and principles of ‘necessity, reasonable, and proportionality’ where

relevant. Therefore, while national law recognizes legal grounds for detention there are questions

as to how those legal bases and the related polices align with international law concerning

arbitrary and/or indefinite detention.

Most importantly, there is no clarity as to who is a migrant in relation to administrative

immigration detention powers and who is not. Domestic laws cited to justify immigration

P a g e | 8

detention include the following: registration and certification of the identity and nationality of a

foreigner, assessing the credibility of refugee or asylum seekers, health, security and character

check and all matters relating to deportation and forced removal. It is important to see that states

justify the use of detention on security grounds mainly in the struggle against terrorism and as a

measure against immigration. On the other hand, the legal scholars have stated that policies of

mass detention are undesirable and are not essential when addressing various legitimate state

goals such as identification and yet are riddled with various problems including arbitrary and

unlawful detentions. Another issue is whether technologies of detaining asylum seekers as a way

of discouraging them amounts to punishment.

International human rights organizations have opined that immigration detention can only be

legal, reasonable and necessary for each detainee. Legal requirements require the individual risk

assessment of one or more persons and the assessment of other possibilities before detaining a

person. But as it was pointed, states demand detention without such evaluations are conducted.

Some of the current issues that have been raised are that the national legal regimes and policies

for immigration detainees do not sufficiently protect them from long period of detention which is

contrary to the prohibition of indefinite and arbitrary detention under international human rights

law. Other Coalition members have called for states to step up efforts to avoid arbitrary

imprisonment. The human rights in the immigration detention centers are in a steady rise across

the world and are in effect another area that needs to be assessed for righting.

f) Ethical considerations in detention practices

Some of the ethical concerns that may be associated with immigration detention practices: In its

most basic form, the idea of holding migrants and asylum seekers in detention centers poses

ethical concerns. Even though states may claim that detention is required for security, identity,

P a g e | 9

and immigration control, the detaining states’ procedural and arbitrary access to extensive and

open-ended detention violates international human rights law regarding arbitrary imprisonment.

Detainees must be held for ‘reasonable suspicion’ and there needs to be periodic assessments of

each detainee’s status. Long term detention affects detainees’ health wise since most of them

have been through traumatic events or they have mental health problems. This means that

facilities should provide detainees with health care, psychiatric services, education, legal aid and

opportunities for leisure and interpersonal relationships.

There are so many reported cases of poor living conditions, cramped accommodation, no

provision of sanitation items and poor or inadequate health care in different detention centers

across the world which is in violation of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules on

treatment of detainees. For effective governance and accountability, there should be measures

that check on inhumane treatment of people, similarly, force and putting prisoners in isolation

should be limited since these amounts to cruel or inhuman treatment. Security personnel and

employees in facilities should undergo their training in human rights with particular regard to the

use of force in a manner that is reasonable. Cultural, religious and dietary preferences of the

detainees should also be observed. The centers should be able to provide for worship services,

provide special meals if possible and also have trained staff of diverse cultural background.

Otherwise, there is discrimination against minority groups. Last but not the least, due to the

lengthy detentions that are not justified for anyone, the Immigration authorities are required to

provide legal processes fairly and efficiently by offering interpretation services and access to

legal aid to the detainees so that they can comprehend the status of their cases. Legal

imperfections jeopardize rule of law and justice thus being in contradiction with legal

procedures.

P a g e | 10

Immigration detainment raises several ethical concerns about detention standards, vulnerable

populations’ treatment, and justice. Continuous supervision is crucial to the prevention of rights

abuse and the suffering that comes with arbitrary detentions. Facilities also have to respect

detainees’ rights to be treated with dignity and respect at the same time there is an

acknowledgment of security concerns at the national level. It thus calls for policy formulation

and implementation with consideration of fairness and a sense of right and wrong.

2. INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAW AND DETENTION

International human rights law prescribes certain baseline standards as to how detained people,

whether in immigration detention centers, ought to be treated. Among them the most well-known

are the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political

Rights and the Convention Against Torture. These affirm right to existence, liberty and

protection of the person, outlawing of torture and prohibition of inhuman and degrading

treatment. However, there are particular guidelines about how the immigrants should be treated

in detention centers, and yet they have been anathema for years for issues of abuse, denial of

access to counsel, health problems, and detention for long periods without a court order.

For instance, immigrant detainees in the United States are detained in over 200 of sheriff-

operated county jails and private prisons that receive contracts from Immigration and Customs

Enforcement. They touch on some of the worst vices like physical and verbally assaulting

detainees, overcrowding, lack of time outside their cells, poor health care, and deaths in custody.

Pretrial detention is a norm: here the average duration of stay in a unit is more than 50 days. The

observers have linked the current conditions of detentions to self-harming behaviors and the

probability of suicides. The case raises a number of questions on the possibility of fulfilling the

human rights requirements to protect an individual’s freedom and dignity.

P a g e | 11

Alternatives do exist. Legal scholars suggest that the community-based case management

programs are a humane approach to dealing with immigrants other than imprisonment. These

allow individuals to remain out of jail and manage their day to day needs as they wait for their

case to be called with support of referral to free lawyers, shelter as well as other psychosocial

services. Others methods of supervision that can be adopted is use of electronic monitoring to

monitor those who are in the program. Piloting such alternatives shows that such measures are

cheaper for governments than traditional approaches to regulating immigration, and that the

overwhelming majority of willing immigrants to maintain a good relationship with the

authorities, adhere to those measures. This means that, increasing similar programs at a larger

scale would significantly reduce the immigration detention while at the same time, attaining the

enforcement goals. On balance therefore, states may stand to meet their human rights obligations

owed to the vulnerable migrants through an embrace of community-based interventions than they

would by merely satisfying motions of ‘unlocking prison cells.

a) Universal Declaration of Human Rights

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

(UDHR) in 1948 and it is a document of principles regarding to human rights for those member

countries. The following articles are directly pertinent when thinking about immigration

detention centers in relative to human rights. Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and

Freedoms also incorporates the right to life, liberty and security of the person; by virtue of

detention, the liberty of detainees is infringed. Specially, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment

and arbitrary arrest or detention are banned in articles 5 and 9 respectively and examples include

torture, indefinite detention. It is not so rare to find discrimination issues being raised more

especially in as much as Article 7 of the constitution provides for equal protection of the law.

P a g e | 12

Second, restoring in accordance with Article 14 of the Human Rights Law the right of asylum

from other states of people who are persecuted.

The provisions of the UDHR do not have any legal force: in general, many of them have

become peremptory norms of international law. Furthermore, the International Covenant on Civil

and Political Rights, a multilateral treaty, codifies into international human rights law even more

detailed detention-related rights: rights to humane treatment, against torture or otherwise cruel

and inhuman treatment, against arbitrary or unlawful arrest and imprisonment, right to a fair trial

and so on. Whereas when state parties’ democracies such as United States ratify to this Covenant,

provisions such detentions above turns into statutory provisions. Consequently, the worth and

evaluation of rights of immigrant detainee in the domestic jurisdiction imply other instruments

include UDHR, ICCPR among others. Here, where legal systems do not respond adequately to

the norms of the international law, the detained immigrants lose the recognition of the

acknowledged subjectivity and value.

Constructive policy alternatives must hence be in concordance with the human rights values

and the states’ responsibility. Even better still, immigration detention should be restricted in the

first instance as civil society organizations advise whenever other less punitive forms of control

are used as much as is possible by the authorities. Yet, where immigration detention is intact,

frequent independent monitoring, right to reasonable attorneys, proportionality of detention

duration and comprehensive improvements in conditions and treatment would minimize human

rights abuses by respecting international standards.

P a g e | 13

b) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) that the United States of

America ratified in 1992 requires the state parties to ensure the named civil and political human

rights of individuals. Articles of the ICCPR, which are relevant to detention practices: People’s

rights to be free from torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as embodied in

Article 7 of the ICCPR; the right to liberty and security of person and protection from arbitrary

detention or imprisonment as spelt out in Article 9 of the ICCPR; the right to humane treatment

while in detention as provided by Article 10 of the ICCPR; and the right to fair trial as provided

under Article 14 of the These baseline protections also have to protect especially vulnerable

groups of people detained such as the non-citizens, women and children.

Immigration detention in particular triggers an array of civil liberties which consist of freedom

as provided under ICCPR. Specifically on Article 9 liberty protections it should be noted that for

the UN Human Rights Committee these remain available on prima facie basis to the immigrant’s

facing deportation unless on proper national security or public order grounds. State Parties also

have elevated standard of care obligations under articles 6,7 and 24 to protect the lives, security

and specific and special needs for the children and families in immigration detention. Some other

issues of human rights arise where there is pre-trial or long-term detention and while it may be

permitted, it can be so only in exceptional circumstances. In a way, some of the serious human

rights issues, where large scale immigration detention is applied include: Inhuman treatment and

right to health and mental health care, legal aid and consular access; detention of asylum seekers;

non-recognition and release of vulnerable immigrants. Essentially, international human rights

law of Article 9, as noted by the UNWGAD, might be violated by domestic laws that permit

mandatory or open-ended immigration detention.

P a g e | 14

c) Convention against Torture

Other important IHRL instrument is the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or

Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) that also protects non-derogatory rights against

torture and other forms of inhuman and degrading treatment. CAT, which has been ratified by

over 150 countries prohibits torture and inhuman and degrading treatment in all situations and

calls for the states’ action in order to prevent it. The CAT provides for an overseeing and

reporting mechanism as in the Committee against Torture to oversee the state’s performance and

offer on the change.

Used in connection with detentions, the CAT has implications for the way and circumstances in

which detainees are confined. Article 16 calls on states to ensure that, ‘other forms of treatment

or punishment that is cruel, inhuman or degrading that does not meet the definition of torture’ is

also prohibited where persons are detained. This directly targets immigration detention centers,

which must justify humane treatment and supervision of detainee. But even today, some centers

violate the rights of patients by continuing to rape, refuse medical attention, isolate for too long,

and provide limited access to personal products, rights organizations have noted. They might be

in violation of provisions of Article 16 in regard to handling of the ill-treatment.

Apart from the function of supervising and investigating the torture and other inhuman

treatments in the detention centers, the article 3 of the CAT has strictly prohibited the

refoulement of such individuals back to the country where the torture or inhuman treatments are

expected to continue. This has emerged as an issue principally in asylum cases where applicants

are detained as the adjudicators try to determine whether the claimant would be tortured if they

were to be deported back to their country. Some have felt that the non-refoulement commitment

should imply that asylum seekers who cannot be returned to their countries of origin cannot be

P a g e | 15

detained for long term detention. Resolving these conflicts between security imperatives,

compassionate treatment, and asylum availabilities is not an accomplished yet.

The Convention against Torture oblige states parties to build significant protection for torture as

well as other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment by exclusion in detention. In order

to fulfill these human rights obligations, it has become order to monitor, report and ensure that

there is accountability mechanism that would ensure that the CAT prohibitions are given proper

effect in immigration detention systems of the common wealth countries. A lot of work is even

now needed to bring the treatment and conditions of detainees into line with the legal

prohibitions on torture.

d) Convention on the Rights of the Child

The United Nations as the world’s forum for international law formulated the Convention on the

Rights of the Child (CRC) in 1989 consisting with certain rights for children which include: the

right to be protected from any type of harm, have preservation of ethnic origin and family, have

access to education and healthcare services, have reasonable quality of live and protection of

children in detention centers While America ratified the CRC, the principles should be applied

where immigration detention policies Contemporary methods of immigration detention have

raised concerns on the manner in which immigrants and asylum seekers’ children are treated.

That is why questions can be raised to those principles of this treaty, being adopted to the

situation of immigrant children’s detention if such violations as long stays in detention, poor

shelter, limited education and recreation, separation of families and differentiation of care

depending on the center take place. In the lack of definitive solutions of the immigration legal

status of children, refugee, asylum seeking and undocumented immigrant children’s need

protection of their rights, that demands new strategies. The case management programs in the

P a g e | 16

communities, on the other hand, can be used to facilitate homes and small shelter instead of

implementing secured facilities that recall the prison and provide social, legal and translation

assistance under supervision of the child welfare specialists. While the CRC provides the general

framework for guiding children’s rights in cases of immigration detention, a higher level of

commitment, supervision and responsibility, the change of approach and perspective, in addition

to the more priorities and emphasis are still required to translate the policy values and processes

into better practices which would help to move away from the mass detention of immigrant

children and families and instead promote the integration, family preservation and child

protection. The subsequent progressions to accomplish the aims and principles of the CRC need

drastic changes in political language and ‘paradigm’, budgetary approaches and functional

actions to overtly endorse empathy, pride and concern for ‘pull’ children.

e) Regional human rights instruments

For the civil and political rights, regional instruments in Europe of America and the African

Charter of Human and peoples’ rights their rights to civil and political as well as economic,

social and cultural rights are also afforded. These instruments impose legal liabilities and

responsibilities on the states for the protection of detainee’s rights and their dignity. For example,

the right to liberty and security of the person is provided by the Article 5 of the ECHR and that

means that detention cannot be arbitrary. Pursuant to this provision, it is for the member states to

assure that imprisonment is legal, not arbitrary and is afforded procedural protection. The

measures in the Inter-American and African systems are similar; contractual supervision and

access to regional court case jurisdiction. Apart from civil liberties, regional frameworks also

protect economic, social and cultural rights that have to do with the conditions and treatment of

detainees. The standards of care in other areas of detention such as medical care are provided by

P a g e | 17

the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture abbreviated CPT. Regional special

rapporteurs were also given mandates to undertake research and prepare special reports

concerning Members’ violations of their detainees’ rights.

Referring to those standards, regional human rights bodies have developed important body of

jurisprudence for the immigration detention. For example, the European Court of Human Rights

has pointed out that the detention must be reasonable, it has to be resorted to only when needed,

and it has to be frequently recurrent. The Inter-American Commission also, for example,

protested obligatory and unlimited detention in the United States which needs human rights

protections and counterparts. In the same manner, the African Commission passed a resolution

on arbitrary mass expulsions and detention of aliens to recognize the duties of states for

immigrants. Thus, regional systems are helpful in presenting practical commitments concerning

the delivery of the norms of universal human rights in the regional environments. They can affect

national reforms through judgments, and through pressure. Nevertheless, these programs do not

have political will, and, more importantly, enforcement capacity to close the implementation

gaps. Hence there must be regional and international collaboration for there to be protection of

detainees’ rights across the world. High quality regional paradigms therefore underpin and give

practical effect to international human rights commitments in the delicate area of immigration

detention.

f) Application of human rights law to immigration detention

The subject of immigration detention has become more important in the recent past particularly

in the context of international human rights law. The UN Human Rights Committee and regional

courts of human rights including the European Court of Human Rights have in the years

developed human rights jurisprudence to the effect that as much as states are allowed to detain

P a g e | 18

and deport aliens, aliens also have fundamental human rights that the States have to respect even

in deportation. Restrictive rights derived from the generic civil and political freedoms are the

right to freedom from being arbitrarily deprived of liberty under ICCPR-Article 9, freedom from

being treated to torture or inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment under ICCPR-Article

7 and the right to respect for the family and private life as enshrined in ICCPR-Article 17.

When determining if immigration detention aligns with human rights requirements, human

rights bodies consider the following aspects: Lawfulness, or non-arbitrariness, is the first

principle. Reasonable proportionality or rational connection is the second one. The third

principle is necessity. Finally, legal action must be subject to review mechanisms. The meaning

of prevention of threat to Others covered in General Comment 35 of UN Human Rights

Committee on Article 9 ICCPR indicates that detention has to be a reasonable, necessary and

proportionate depending on the circumstance of the case. Both the Human Rights Committee and

regional bodies have stated that detention is disproportionate or arbitrary in the following

situations: Detention of Stateless persons; Long Term detention without proper cause; Detention

of Children. These bodies claim that the detention should be employed selectively and detention

standards should be elevated.

The idea of immigration detainees’ protection has generated many cases seen by Regional

Human Rights Courts. The European Court of Human Rights observed violation arising from

failure to conduct adequate detention reviews under Article 5 in two cases namely Kim v Russia

and Azimov v Russia. Regarding Article 3 of the Convention, the Court in M. S. S. v Belgium &

Greece has pointing out overcrowding, lack of cleanliness and medical services, together with no

period of out of doors exercising as inhuman or degrading treatment. Internal organs of the OAS

P a g e | 19

have also employed the human rights norms for evaluating detention contingents and rights of

Migrants and Asylum seekers belonging to the Americas.

Domestic courts have also relied more often on the international norms to assess compliance of

their countries’ immigration detention regimes with human rights. For example, United States,

United Kingdom, Hong Kong and India – common law countries – have seen constitutional

matters in relation to laws on immigrant detention. While the actualization of such changes is

still in the process of realization, human rights entities continue to articulate and extend the case

law concerning States, and often their officials, obligations towards immigrants in detention; this

naturally exerts political pressure on governments to embrace at least the rhetorical vision of the

rights-based approach.

3. CONDITIONS IN DETENTION CENTERS

Immigrants’ detention centers in many jurisdictions have of late received criticism of poor

standards that are regarded as infringements of the rights of immigration detainees. A number of

detainees are held in detention centers; most of them have inadequate access to sleeping

facilities, water, and sanitation provisions. The US Inspector General published a report in

January 2019 where some of the facilities many of the detainees were housed and subjected to

gross overcrowding with no access to showers or hot meals for days. His next conquest was

towards the crowded and unhygienic places as illness and diseases are not difficult to make their

way through a large number of people. The rights of detainees to health and proper treatment are

violated because medical care is a rare privilege or always comes late.

Mental health is also not left out in detainment as some of the detainees are exposed to several

vices as they await their trials. Depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies become manifest, or are

P a g e | 20

exacerbated, by stress, state limbo, isolation and indefinite detention. Detainees can develop new

and previously undiscovered mental illnesses during their time incarcerated, symptoms which

guards and other staff might not be equipped to diagnose or treat, if called upon to do so. Other

of the recorded atrocities that were enumerated include solitaire confinement and other forms of

physical restraint used on the mentally ill. Solitary confinement is as defined by human rights

organizations as a torture instrument. Poor psychological well-being results from some

conditions some of which include the following: lack of recreation and time space. Research

studies in cross-sectional correlation of child psychology show that children denied their parental

bonds and kept in detention suffer from severe and life-long emotional trauma.

They are detained in state-run facilities, thus; immigration detainees’ health, safety and human

rights are protected by domestic and international law. However, supervision and monitoring of

these detentions center remain poor in many countries. monitored very poor and Human rights

issues remain open and other more chances for violation are given. Some of them have come

under criticism and condemnation by the government for some conditions and abuses that are

predominant in them as well as legal challenges from activists and calls for reform. Support for

lives which call for the implementation of case management instead of detention is on the rise

now in the international market. Reducing compulsory, interminable detainment and restricting

their execution to special situations might be beneficial to states, containing the hazardous

persons, reducing population density, expenses, and the danger of infringing detainees’ rights.

Improving supervision and guaranteeing some minimum standard of accommodation in the

remaining buildings is also viewed as the steps on the way to the more ethical and humane

approach to detention.

P a g e | 21

a) Physical infrastructure and overcrowding

Many centers of immigration detention in countries of the world are in very poor shape as far as

infrastructure and overcrowding are concerned. Prisoners describe woefully small cells where

they can have no or minimal privacy or space to lie down at all. Some detainees reported that

they are compelled to sleep on mats on the floor without giving them any blankets, some other

detainees said that some of them had to use bed sheets that were hung from the ceiling so as to

cover the place and at the same time make a semblance of separate sections. There is also a

major shortage of bathrooms and showers and the public is for instance left with facilities that

have non-functional amenities such as faucets and handles and are often covered in mold. Some

of the buildings lack architectural features that have been adapted to detaining and have turned

other buildings, like warehouses, into detaining facilities or have used beds or mattresses under a

large compound enclosed by a fence. This congestion gives detainees a considerable

psychological pressure and may also spread easily transmissible diseases.

Housing is the most common facility developed in these facilities; however, some of these

facilities have a limited development in medical areas, kitchens, recreational or open space areas

as well. As such it may be extremely challenging to meet with what might be considered the

most fundamental of human necessities including health care, food, clean air, and exercise.

Conditions like the above for such periods do not form any minimum standards of a safe

environment and rather pose a danger to the lives and dignity of the detainees. Such options as

community-based case management programs can enable people to live in homes and not in

detention centers which are actually poorly run jails where people are held against their own free

will as they wait for their immigration cases to be heard. Supervision and setting national

standard on conditions and facilities for immigration detainee should also mean that immigration

P a g e | 22

detainee are given their rights not in immigration centers that are built like those of criminal

justice systems. Physical conditions should be safe, clean, and humane for the immigrants

regardless of the rationale for their detention and must not be grossly overcrowded because of

the number of detainees for capacity.

b) Health and medical care

Health and medical care are one of the most serious human rights abuses documented in

immigration detention centers. The detainee normally gets very restricted occasions whereby to

ask for both, physical and/or mental treatment. The simplest necessity, that most of the detention

centers do not hire enough staff to meet the essential needs of the states of health of the

immigrants in detention. Human Rights Watch in the course of an investigation carried out a

study and found that detainee/physician ratio in five detention centers is 1500: 1, and that is far

beyond the norms recommended by detention health care specialists. This is especially so

because detainees lack adequate attention from staff; they can wait for a long time, even for a

chest pains ailment to be attended to by a doctor. This can also cause some conditions to

aggravate due to the many hours taken before the condition is treated. Besides, communication

disorders complicate the evaluation of the problem areas as well as the treatment. It was

established that nearly all the facilities complained of inadequate interpretation services, thereby

forcing detainees to depend on fellow detainees who understand English, a factor that defeats the

principle of confidentiality of cases. This is since medication errors are most likely to occur each

time the client and the health care provider cannot understand each other because of the language

barrier.

Conditions of confinement too has some adverse impacts on detainee health in different ways.

Some cases of this situation in many centers include overcrowding, most of the children lack

P a g e | 23

cleanliness, they spend little or no time playing, and their feeding is usually inadequate. It is

some of the causes of communicable diseases such as; COVID-19, skin diseases, diarrhea, and

gastrointestinal diseases. This is so especially bearing in mind that scholars reveal that at least

half the detainees are likely to be suffering from depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress

disorder, or any related mental illness. Family seclusion, uncertain future, and confinement

environments are expensive. The suicide rates of detainees differ, it can also be up to 9 times

higher than in people not confined in cells. But coverage for mental health is frequently

inadequate or absent altogether. Modern antipsychotic, antidepressant and other psychotropic

means are bought and used deliberately without obligatory consultation. The mentally ill

detainee ends up in the solitary cell and not the community capacity. The coordinative omission

of precautions against infectious and chronic diseases and the over-all mental health of detainees

speaks volumes for the need for improved health care policies in immigration detention centers.

Hence, severe health/medical care deficiencies are representative of immigration detention

referring to staffing shortage, absence of language interpretation services, improper containment,

excessive utilization of isolation/segregation, and excessive prescription of medication without

counselling. There is dire need to address some of these causes so as to reduce on the number of

people who die as a result of bad health systems. The government has an added task of

confronting some of the challenges that detainees undergo; in as much as they are diagnosed,

treated and provided with other forms of preventive measures relating to physical and mental

illnesses. The problem that is dominant in the present human rights context is that the health care

standards at immigration detention centers as well as the supervisory arrangements which govern

them require a robust strengthening.

P a g e | 24

c) Food, water and sanitation

Confinement centers have been raised concern on the provision of food, water and hygiene

services to the detainees. A number of the detainees and the nonprofit organizations as well as

oversight agencies of the government give a disturbing picture. This is because the food served

in many facilities has been found not to meet the governmental detention standards on food

quality and nutritional values, variation and cultural differences. Some of the existing challenges

include a low energy meal plan, contaminated foods and they don’t have medical diet foods. That

is why such shortcomings may provoke weight loss, disease, and rebellion among prisoners and

detainees. Similarly, some detention centers permit restricted access to water or provide only

non-operational water fountains whereby detainees receive insufficient clean water for drinking

and washing needs. This impacts health and sanitation because cleanliness, and hygiene are

affected. Toilets, sinks, and showers are inadequate to the number of detainees in many centers as

well. Although many of the facilities in which toilet amenities are available are exposed,

dilapidated, dirty or lack toilet paper and soap, detainees continue to live inoffensively and in an

incongruent manner. They foster contagious sickness among the detained populace since poor

healthcare services are accorded to them. The governmental detention standards and international

human rights principles do confirm that immigration detainees are entitled to rights pertaining to

food, water, sanitation, and health and amongst others; and as such any violations by different

immigration facilities show a systematic problem that needs to be changed. Basically, to enhance

safe and human standard in immigration detention, strict supervision for the contractors who runs

the centers, better infrastructure and construction, reduced occupancy and more educated staffs.

In the future, policymakers and advocates should persist in calling for and creating better non-

custodial dispositions while governments pursue institutional aims, especially for asylum

seekers, families and others.

P a g e | 25

d) Access to legal representation

A key problem that human rights activists have with immigration detention centers in America is

that the detainees are accorded very few rights with regard to meeting a lawyer or any legal

services. Studious also evidences indicate that immigrants have higher probabilities of qualifying

for relief or protection on their immigration cases if they are aided by a lawyer. However, these

detention centers are located in backward areas where there is no access to lawyers making it

very hard for detainees to hire one. For example, a survey conducted in 2016 revealed that the

Immigration detention facilities were on average 64 miles away from a nonprofit immigration

attorney. This geographic isolation lessens the probabilities of the lawyers to physically get to the

clients even for the purpose of appraising the cases. The language issue also affects

representation since, in many detention centers, there are few and restricted materials and

resources in detainees’ languages.

Detainees are known to be sometimes able to hire lawyers but restricted circumstances in the

facilities deny them the opportunity to consult with their attorneys on crucial defense matters. Ex

migratory and restricted visits respectively severely limit the number of contacts and the time

that an attorney has with the detained clients. Security checks are painful to the visits of legal

entities. Invasion of privacy during consultations are one of the biggest violations of the

fundamental standards of attorney-client privilege. In the same way, the telephone conversations

are also constrained by rehabilitation of low frequency, short time and high charges per call

hence they are of limiting factor in enabling the lawyer to prepare the cases and give right

advice. In all of these, the detained immigrants are unable to develop even a rudimentary

understanding of the immigration laws let alone creating a coherent defense to cases that could

well determine whether or not they will live or die.

P a g e | 26

Most immigrants never seek legal assistance and as such never get the relief that is accorded to

them and end up being deported although this is unfair since it is always a case of the odds being

stacked against them. Detention centers prevent immigrants from hiring lawyers; they undermine

the legal process and reduce immigrants’ ability to fight their deportation cases. It is therefore

important in this regard to increase coverage of legal professionals to these distant centers to

meet human rights’ needs as well as ensure all detainees have a realistic opportunity to seek legal

redress. First, solitary architectural design of the detention centers underlines the absence of

complex development of the non-detention, community-anchored model of the legal assistance

that is grounded in legal outreach, advocacy, and representation.

e) Communication with family and outside world

Perspectives regarding the social isolation of detainees are that the vast number of centers has

minimum communication with the outer world including their own families. This means that

detainees can rarely have a use of a telephone, an email or video calling to talk to their friends or

families. For instance, research undertaken in 2016 found out that the detainee in Stewart

Detention Center in Georgia was only allowed to make one 5-10 minutes call. Extra calls require

a process that is rather time-consuming and demanding which can become fairly

incomprehensible for many of the users. Far more startling was the information that at the

California facility in Otay Mesa the cost per call could go as high as Far more startling was the

information that at the California facility in Otay Mesa the cost per call could go as high as $50-

80 per minute – that is, such communication was essentially impossible economically.

In the following, it will be seen that some restrictions do not end at multiple-site telephonic

contact. For example, 2022 research on the Torrance County Detention Facility underlined the

following liberties: internet is limited, incoming mail is prohibited, information about sending

P a g e | 27

mails is scarce and no form of visits allowed. Any such wider restrictions exclude detainees to a

fair extent from communicating with the relevant parties such as relatives, employers or counsel

about their circumstances and needs.

There lies the fact that the implications of such restrictions of communication as had been

mentioned above are far-reaching. Stress, depressive trends, loneliness are also intensified at

detainment centers because detainees are deprived of communications with relatives including

dependent children. He and other outsiders of the ‘family’ also get his/her own anxiety when one

is locked out of any information from within the ‘family’. As applied to detainees’ mail or email,

legal defense and outstanding legal actions can be harmed if detainees were not permitted to

write or receive the means. As the social psychologists have said, it can lead even to the

deterioration of one’s health – be it physical or mental – if one has no social outlets to take out

his frustration and seek support. In summary restrictions to people in the outside world may

make immigration detention little more complex in view of those five areas that are emotional,

legal, health and family stability.

In contrast, the advocates have listed some examples of what might be called model cases. For

example, the Northwest Detention Center in Washington state has made its externally provided

video visitation free within the facility and provided more extensive access to interpretation

services. Several European centers offer facilities for separate usage of e-mail terminals and

fairly affordable telephone time-sharing. Expanding a similar model to allow for various cheap

methods of communicating with outsiders could greatly improve the conditions of people

detained under the immigration hearings or decisions. Given that research characterizes social

relations as one of the key human needs, it is possible to regard as the part of a just and humane

policy an opportunity to maintain a connection with the near and distant ones.

P a g e | 28

f) Vulnerable populations in detention

Of all other ills of immigration detention, it is worse for children, pregnant women,

homosexuals, and people with health complications. People specifically children are at risk

because detention in general re-traumatizes the children who have been exposed to violence and

adversity in their migration paths. There are journals that indicate that thousands of children are

detained each year and the psychosocial impact which includes, fear, developmental changes,

and traumatic symptoms. The conditions of detention per se also have the tremendous impact

upon children with little to no chance to read, to play or even to get some kind of support from

their families. However, with regard to the reference factor, victimization of lesbian, gay,

bisexual, and transsexual people and their situation worsen sexual assault in addition, isolation

confinement and limited access to medical treatment in custody. The plight of the transgender

women is compounds by the fact that they are constantly harassed and abused by employees of

the male facilities in which they are housed as well as other inmates. Due to these cumulative

dangers, several organizations have called for an expressed prohibition on the detaining of queer

persons. Consequently, the detention health care system has also suffered enormous difficulties

in delivering P and MH care services especially for hidden disorders. Emerging studies reveal

that diabetics are being forced to go for weeks without the needed drugs and that there are not

enough psychiatric surgeons to offer care to abused women or men. They also require far more

attention and care than they received—many said they had been neglected, Denied Services, and

suffered poor pregnancy outcomes while under the care of Detention. In the given cases, it is

clear that immigration detention aggravates the situation of already vulnerable people, as well as

isolates them. The detention standards should be made stringent and detention should be cut

down with the help of increase in the case management services. Such clients can be better met

and protected within community options than when placed in detention setting which is

P a g e | 29

appropriate for single healthy males. To some extent the principles of human rights, human

dignity and care to asylum seekers can be protected when the government has limited the

aggregated stays and has restricted detentions to vulnerable groups. The Immigration officers are

to increase the level of safety for people and figure out how to save and protect children,

homosexual people, pregnant women, sick people, persecuted women and men, victims of sexual

harassment and other vulnerable people.

4. MENTAL HEALTH AND PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPACT

The ill treatment in terms of psychological and mental health of asylum seekers and immigrants

detained during immigration is one of the most aggrieved human rights in the world. Various

studies have estimated that mental illnesses are exceedingly rampant among detainees and that

this is caused by the conditions under which they are detained, and the fact that they have no

timeline, that is, they can be detained indefinitely. Although immigration detention centers are

categorized as administrative and nonpenal, their structure and conditions may bear a striking

resemblance to those of prison: razors, prison-like cells, restricted physical activity, very scarce

access to psychological care. Such conditions trigger the aggravation of mental health disorders

in the detainees owing to trauma, stress and instability in detention. In the same vein, the new

alchemy of Prolonged Detention brings about new forms of stress including anxiety, depression,

post-traumatic stress disorder, self-harm and thoughts of suicide. This can be seen when noting

down various countries, which have put in place immigration detention systems.

A 2015 analysis by the Australian government uncovered the 30. 5% of detained children

suffered clinical-level depressive or increase anxiety disorder and an inquiry in 2016 found the

mental conditions of grown-ups who had been detained long term have deteriorated substantially.

Also an American research that was done on detainees in a private facility at the University of

P a g e | 30

Pennsylvania showed that 86 percent of the detainees had higher elevated anxious-depress

symptoms. As has been already stated, the conditions under which detainees are kept have been

characterized by, inter alia, strict, prison like regimens and have been recognized by such

reputable organizations as Human Rights Watch as constituting cruel, inhuman and degrading

treatment if tried on an indefinite basis. The uncertainty relating to detention introduces a further

consequence: asylum seekers can be detained and are unable to know how long they will be

detained or whether they will be released on appeal. Essentially, the confinement tanks’ open

ended mental health. When the UK government decided to limit the time for immigration

detention in the year 2001 there was a reduced case of prisoner’s suicide attempts besides

reduced cases of prisoner uprisings.

It is obvious that using humane forms of non-detention would considerably bring down these

effects on one’s mental health in the first place. Ways that may be suggested may include release

to the community on supervision that requires the families to report to work at least once in a

week, or open “reception centers for refugee families” that offer housing to families and are

authorized for families to go even outside. Restricted access to information combined with

confinement leads to psychological pressure – to it, the detainees’ increased control over their

daily schedule, gain access to educational and recreational facilities and mental health services

would also help to alleviate. It remains important to maintain time limits for migrant and aspirant

detainment while waiting for the decision on their status because the prolonged detainment is the

most invasive. These extreme rates of mental health issues lie squarely at the feet of immigration

detention – that is a violation of human rights in any country that detains immigrants – the

community has to look for other means.

P a g e | 31

a) Trauma and stress in detention settings

Due to the characteristics of immigration detention as torture, detention results in psychological

damage and chronic stress to detainees. These are as follows: disfranchisement and right to

choose, wanting control over the future, isolation from family and other social relationships, lack

of meaningful framework for intellectual engagement and stimulation and organizational process

that erase the humanity of the detainees.

Literature in relation to prisoners’ mental health suggest that imprisonment lowers mental

health and human quality of life in the long run. Immigration detention is as similar to prison in

that a person has limited freedom of movement and choice as well as a highly structured day to

day activities under the force of authority. Other stress peculiar to immigrant detainees include:

emigration/immigration and the consequent cultural-linguistic conflict and alienation. This alone

provokes a great deal of concern and grief over shattered long-lived lives in new countries of

residence.

Some of the stress reactions that result from long-term sojourn in overcrowded enclosed

detentions are; lack of privacy, suffering witnessed in other detainees, monotonous stress and

uncertainty of time to freedom. Tough, prison-like conditions enfranchise them because they rob

them articles of their individuality, limiting their ability, restricting their freedom, labeling them

as criminals or enemies of the state and not needing protection or care. Prisoners have been

known to reason that they contract new mental illnesses – depression, anxiety, panic disorder,

insomnia, anorexia and weight loss and symptoms mimicking PTSD. Many of them also fast or

self-mutilate like cutting their arm to be given control again.

At the moment, the provision of counseling and group therapy in these centers is grossly

inadequate and very little center staff are trained in trauma-informed care. Pain and torment still

P a g e | 32

remain anonymous, to say nothing of the absence of therapy. Organizational features and

inmates’ culture create relational stress, which usually presents itself as aggression, effectively

contributing to trauma. Inmates also deprave or even the restraints are used by the guards for the

sole intention of making them worse. Incarceration on asylum seekers or those in a search of

better lives will always leave them with a violation of their human dignity and emotional bovine

collapse in general.

b) Impact on children and families

Immigration detention takes a toll on the psychological well-being of children and families in

particular. Research has also established that even short-term suspensions cause adverse effects

on children’s psychological well-being and development and social adjustment. Detention

replicates trauma and puts children in line to develop depression, anxiety, PTSD and other

problems that follow them even after they are out of detention. The impacts on the mental health

of parents in detention also has negative effects on the entire family.

It is important to note that parents detained in facilities have a higher prevalence of mental health

issues compared to the rest of the immigrants. The level of stress that such individuals

experience in prison and the inability to determine what will happen to their immigration cases

leads to the worsening of pre-existing mental illnesses as well as the development of new ones.

Asylum-seeking parents have a higher prevalence of depression, anxiety disorders, PTSD, and

other psychiatric disorders. This emotion is able to interfere with the parent’s capacity to

properly bond and nurture their children in the proper manner. Research reveals that detained

asylum seekers are less affectionate or playful when with their children than when they are with

their peers. Another area impacted by the parent-child relationship is privacy loss and

P a g e | 33

prohibitions on physical contact in facilities. Parents lose their authority over their children and

simultaneously fail to be able to perform the parents’ duties.

Worse still, children also experience stressful separations from parents, who are often detained. It

has been established that family detention policies do not consider child protection procedures.

They happen if a child misbehaves and ends up in another facility, if a parent is deported but the

child’s case is still ongoing. The notion of such separations is painful and contributes to the

suffering detention causes to children. Coping mechanisms or conditions that may reduce these

risks are also absent in this setting hence exposing the children to further psychological harm in

the short and long term. In these ways, the mental health effect of detention permanently

undermines the parent-child bond in asylum seeking families.

Based on the current knowledge of child development and trauma, the crucifixion of children

and families cannot be justified by any policy goal. Many mental health professionals maintain

that these facilities cannot be modified to accommodate the needs of children. Options that

permit children and families to live in community arrangements pending Immigration Court

proceedings preserve well-being, ensure access to legal representation, and provide important

services in the best interest of the child and the preservation of families. Detention is always

detrimental to the best interest of children and their families; non-custodial measures do not have

such adverse effects in ensuring compliance with legal proceedings. The psychological effects of

detention on children, and their parents further support the need for policy changes that favor

family, community-based solutions as opposed to detention for immigrants seeking asylum.

P a g e | 34

c) Long-term effects of detention

Short-term confinements often have adverse effects on the mental health of such persons in the

long run. Several works have shown that detained immigrants evince higher level of anxiety,

depression, PTSD and other markers of psychological state than non-detained immigrants and

normal population. In other words, detention as such leads to the deterioration of detainees’

mental health, no matter what their past was – whether they had traumatic experiences or mental

health issues before being detained. These problems are however aggravated when many hours

are spent in custody.

The severe context of the institutional surroundings means that detainees are compelled by the

rigorous procedures of Detention centers that are intrinsically deleterious to a detainee’s mental

health. Lack of control over one’s life and privacy, exclusion from decisions which shape their

existence for instance choice of time use, exclusion from family and other social relations

undermines the immigrants’ self. However, fear of being expelled and the uncertainty of one’s

legal status and the future fully immobilizes a person. The stress is focused on when or if they

will be released, expelled or transferred from one prison to another. The final stage is

hopelessness and depression in which the detained immigrants mentally feel like committing

suicide or they actually attempt to do so.

There has also been confirmation that, through detention, there might also be bad impacts on

the physical/mental health, development of new diseases or ill health, disruption of learning

capabilities and function of the children of the detained immigrants. Some legal concerns are

unpaid fees that are arising from release since they cannot be paid while in prison, fines for

criminal conduct, and time spent in jail. Everything sums up pressure to the mental health and

wellbeing of the formerly detained immigrants who are now existing a life outside detention.

P a g e | 35

They are left with psychologically, socially, occupationally, and economically disruptive

disorders without the privileges of medical or social services. For the same reason, the personal

suffering is not confined to the length of the detention either. Numbering from thirty-four to

thirty-eight different immigrants detained per year in the United States, the sum of cumulative

impacts on societies is far from insignificant. The only way to change this humanely is,

therefore, to alter the current immigration detention model and offer more, though not entirely

open-ended, community options.

d) Mental health services in detention centers

Availability and quality of mental health care in immigration detention centers has been a cause

for concern, particularly due to some of the social media coverage of what is perceived as a

perceived or reported substandard mental health provision. Studies that have been conducted in

this regard have revealed high levels of anxiety, depression and PTSD of detainees with

estimates of 75% to 80%. However, mental health in detention centers is a critical area of

concern because it rarely gets the attention, evaluation or treatment of such disorders. Some of

the reasons include: staff shortage; language barriers; deficient teaching on the usage of trauma-

informed care; prolonged usage of disciplinary isolation; and, naturally, the general stress that

comes with detention.

Counseling/medically needing detainee has long waits for service because there are only a few

staff on hand to provide these services. For example, the waiting list for the appointment may

even be weeks or months; the symptoms will therefore continue running rampart. Another area

that also undergoes some certain imperfections is the prescription management where

prescriptions taken and given ineffectively. Technological interventions like telepsychiatry and

demand-based services can only marginally enhance access and that too with the problems of

P a g e | 36

privacy and cultural sensitivity. Also, counseling and evaluations take place in places where there

are other people through an interpreter hence discouraging the individual to disclose.

This seems not to be appreciated by the staff enough who lacks enough understanding of how

trauma, family separation, uncertainty, and detention conditions worsen the mental health of

detainees. Systematic reporting of proven treatments for the trauma related diseases is practically

non-existent. Nevertheless, behaviors stir up seclusion and that is a large boost to psychological

disorders. Closeness of the environment is felt to be a prison from which arises helplessness,

mistrust and distress at the very start. They are accorded considerably fewer visits, phone calls,

and face-to-face-interaction with other persons, receive psychiatry less often than other

prisoners.

If detention centers are going to address psychiatric needs sufficiently, they will have to shift

from traditional punitive to therapeutic, human rights-based and non-penal model of detention.

Some initial steps that should be taken in relation to this area would be to raise the case

management resources directed at presenting long-term counselling, emergency services, and

stress minimization programs. Centers would also need increased numbers of psychiatric staff,

education of mental health for all types of staff, accurate prescription, and incorporation all

cultural competency measurer that are related. Thus, progression demands a cultural shift of

detainee regarding rights, the option for treatment to be provided, and consequences of detention.

e) Suicide and self-harm prevention

The consequences of the immigration detention from the point of psychological aspects are also

quite profound. Studying the situation, it is possible to state that the level of depressive

symptoms, anxiety state, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other mental health issues among

P a g e | 37

detainees is beyond any doubt. One can only consider the extension of most worrisome, the

increasing incidence of suicidal ideation and self-injurious behaviors. Self-harm was for instance

highlighted in one Australian study whereby 46% of the detainees had suicidal thoughts and over

one third had engaged in self-harm while in detention. It is possible to point out numerous and

numerous causes for this phenomenon and, in pursuit of brevity, I will list some of the most

crucial ones only. Many of them are already in a bad shape due to past abuses, from experiences

in their home country or while en-route to seek asylum. The conditions of the detention, for

instance, solitary confinement, ignorance of own case, no communication with relatives and

friends may then lead to a deterioration of mental health. Hopes fades and helplessness prevails.

In addition, there are still few resources, few access to screening tools and few trained staff, and,

thus, mental health problems are still un-recognized and untreated. The outcome is lethal on both

the detainee’s health and life together with legal and ethical duty.

In this respect, it is also important to remember that there are options and, therefore, there are

chances for change. Improving the provision of mental health care in such institutions is still

useful but not sufficient. The conception of the whole detention approach requires

reconsideration. Out patients must identify other related services and support that has to be

provided in non-institutional settings that can be offered in the community. Patient that needs

higher level of care should also be availed case management and high level of care coordination.

It is crucial to improve the aspects of screening and risk evaluation in order that patients with

self-harm behaviors or patients with suicidal intentions are caught on systematic manner. High-

risk patients should then be directed to other hospital-level other care settings that can evaluate

safety as well as employ sound mechanisms of suicide prevention. The other more general

P a g e | 38

nonstructural and personnel changes of detention centers also still demand a betterment of

emergency crisis intervention plans for psychotic episodes.

This means elimination of punishment that is associated with a negative reinforcement and

emphasis on the provision of positive health messages. Instead of placing asylum seekers in

settings that contribute to increased trauma and suicide risk as a result of the nature of the

facilities, refugee friendly shelters and services could continue with the legal obligations that

entails a review of their cases, their health rights with no promotion of more deaths being a result

of suicide or self- harm in detention centers. Solutions are not sought in punitive imprisonment

system of the post 1970s, but in human rights, equality and public health paradigms.

f) Staff mental health and burnout

It can be expected that staff working in immigration detention centers will suffer from a range of

extreme mental consequences. Directors, guards, health-care employees and all other employees

working in such centers are at risk of second order stress, compassion fatigue and burn out. That

is why the stressful close and emotionally exhausting environment together with the lack of staff

and long working hours and the supervisors’ insistence on limiting contact with the detainees.

Guards especially must display order and security measure like isolation, which amounts to

psychological torturing. To remain helpless and watch traumatized and deprived children and not

being able to able to reach them and support them underpins helplessness, moral injury and

cynicism in the long haul. Secondary traumatization affects the members of the staff which gives

symptoms at the staff being easily irritated, or becoming aloof, or being plagued by nightmares,

or substance use. For them to cover up their atrocities they may psychologically detach

themselves become racial or sectarian in their fear and hatred, justify their barbarisms, or become

cold hearted and industrialized in their mission to impose order where there is none to feed their

P a g e | 39

egos. All of these reactions can lead fairly rapidly to burn out if staff training does not address

the realities of detention work and if it does not teach staff members about how they can manage

their own well-being. Leadership that prevents the employees from reporting their woes or policy

concerns is also undesirable, these often-overlooked occupational risks have a knock-on

implication on the ability to retain and enhance workforce productivity when such hazards are

not dealt with adequately. However, there are plenty of the truly positive practices like the stress

management training for employees, available mental health care, supervision which encourages

the employees to save their personal time, aimed efforts to decrease the level of tension and

hopelessness at the workplace. Despite the fact that the main problems of human rights violation

in immigration detention cannot be solved with such staff supports, it was revealed that they are

in a reciprocal relationship to the wellbeing of the staff and the detainees. The maintained staff’s

mental health practice proposed by the organization erases staff burn out, which entices

inefficiency and negligence and abuse of detainees or other malignant actions injurious to the

detained immigrants. Hence staff mental health is directly connected to the concerns about harms

and future of US immigration detention that has to be the focus of the conversation about

detention standards or expansion.

5. SPECIAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR VULNERABLE GROUPS

Immigrants’ detention centers must also accord special attention to women, children,

homosexuals and lesbians, elderly folks, and those with physical and mental illnesses. According

to the surveys, the kind of people are not provided for in detention and are exposed to inhuman

treatments, which are prohibited by human rights conventions. Some of the items that the women

are subjected to work under humiliating nature include: no provision of women hygiene products

such as towels, pregnant women not given privacy to bath or access antenatal services. Other

P a g e | 40

forms of abuse are also rife among women in custody and include risk of sexual assault and

trauma. Special features such as female guards and medical attendants, offering counseling

services, among others are other features of extra privacy. Detentions have been found to cause

severe psychological harm to children – The use of case management programs is preferable.

Facilities, education, recreation, nutrition, and protection for children: children also require right

facilities, right education and recreation, proper nutrition and courts safeguard their interests.

LGBTQ people have a higher risk of physical and/or sexual assault, being put in solitary

confinement for protection, and being discriminated against formally/criminally while in

detention. Concerning gender identity, there must be a ban on discrimination in placement

matters, prohibition of discrimination by staff, staff to be trained on the needs of the LGBTQ

population. Old and disabled detainees may not well be able to wash, take their medication or

move around on their own or with minimal help which has to be appropriately provided. Finally,

psychiatric disorders also deserve good evaluation more than supervision of suicidal thoughts

and poor management of psychotropic medications. Other negative impacts have also been

observed of short contact between infants and their mothers after birth and breast feeding for

lactating mothers where bond between them and child is disrupted for reform. The main issue is

that, detention centers that are quite akin to prisons, are not appropriate for the vulnerable group

in the first instance. Other immigration programs which allow persons to reside in communities

as they wait for outcomes of immigration courts are better placed in providing access to legal

aid, healthcare, psychosocial services, education and other community support systems that

improve living conditions and compliance with fundamental human rights.

P a g e | 41

a) Women in detention

The best practices for immigration detention centers must take in tow the fact that the troubles

and infringements of the rights of immigrants are not the same for men and women. According to

the research women detainees are harassed through sexual abuse, given limited health care and

children are taken away from them. Many of the women detainees are carrying one form of

trauma or the other from either their home country or the process of migration; thus, detention is

traumatic for the women.

I singled out sexual victimization for consideration as it is one of the frightening issues for

women’s rights and mental health organizations. Studies have indicated that women detained in

these centers experience very high levels of sexual harassment, assault and abuse from the staff

of these facilities as well as the male detainees. The accounts being documented in the centers in

United States include sexual touching during searches, violation of privacy and forced sex. Such

experiences may be more or less shocking to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender detainees.

In addition to heading the calls for reform of this institution to boost the level of protection,

scholars are advised to reduce the number of detainees and promote the use of non-custodial

measures to reduce the risk of abuse of this particular category.

Equally, the centers’ access to reproductive health services as well as prenatal care has also

been cited to be inadequate in the various centers. It describes downer issues like absence of;

sanitary wipes, contraception, Pap smear, and adequate antenatal care. Inadequate quality of

health care early in the course of a woman’s pregnancy or shortly after her delivery, has a long-

term impact on the lives of the mother and her child. Besides, the physical separation of the

detained women from their children has the effect of violating human rights. Continued criticism

has it that even short separations violate the concept of togetherness that a family promotes and

P a g e | 42

that should be afforded to refugees. This would help the mothers who have immigration issues to

be with their children yet the same can meet the court orders.

In recent years, both the global and the continental human rights’ groups and platforms have

passed a number of measures aimed at protecting the rights and human dignity and mental health

of immigrants in detention facilities. However, with reference to the conditions of detention

centers and the policies of the countries listed as of the current period, there has not been much

of a transformation. Additional lobbying efforts are needed to enact the strengthened provisions

for the protection of all individuals who may be detained – with special regard to the above-

defined categories of individuals as being most vulnerable.

b) LGBTQ+ detainees

Gay, lesbian and bisexual applicants or refugees are at a higher risk of being denied or abused at

immigration offices due to their gender or LGBT+ preference. E delivering services to

transgender women and female to male transsexuals are so exposed to risk in detention centers.

They are always transferred with the male prisoners and they are raped and denied equal

provision of medical attention. Transgender women are prone to sexual violation Based on the

survey that revealed that approximately 30% of the transgender women who were arrested in

immigration detention centers. The harm enacted is that it has severe detrimental effects on their

psychological well-being; the LGBTQ + detainees evidence more physical symptoms of anxiety,

depression, PTSD, and ideations of suicidality than do other detainees.

For the international human rights norms to be upheld and so that the detainees do not suffer

more, there is need to extend special protection to the LGBTQ+ immigrant detainees. Use of

gender identity instead of the sex assigned at birth in private housing and bathroom decrease the

P a g e | 43

likelihood of the following risks that the transgender detainee is most likely to encounter when

detained by his or her biological sex. The same is the case with the situation of students who live

in specialized LGBTQ+ housing pods or in units. However, such policies should be made

voluntary in this respect so as to avert the likelihood of further social exclusion. Also, there is a

need for culturally sensitive and timely mental health service because the community is over-

represented among those who are arrested or detained for mental disorders and or suicidal related

injuries in police detention centers.

Apart from adoption of non-discrimination policies, staff and officers of the bank undertake

training aimed at making sure that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer persons do not

suffer discrimination, harassment or abuse due to their gender or sexual orientation. Likewise, it

seems that facilities must allow adequate supervision, and documentation procedures for

LGBTQ+ detainees to report abuse and not be punished. Last but not the least; the idea of

individual assessments for non-custodial measures on the ground of non-solitary confinement

that violates the detainees’ dignity, and arbitrarily detaining them to cause further trauma suits

the most the vulnerable LGBTQ Plus detainees who remain at a higher risk in detention. The

protection of the rights of the LGBTQ+ immigrants that are detained today might be achieved

through extending better policies and programs for them.

c) Elderly and disabled detainees

Detainees who are elderly and disabled are particularly at risky in an immigration detention.

These are considered specific risks that can occur in the detention centers of which a significant

number are often ill-equipped for the additional care needs where detainees are of an older age or

have physical or mental illnesses. Most of the detainees are senior citizens and due to physical

decline and or long-term illness they develop complications such as hypertension, heart diseases

P a g e | 44

and diabetes among others that need close follow up and regular medication. Immigrants’

detention facilities have been accused of insufficient staffing, and inadequate medical care that

does not include those immigrants in detention with diseases and in their old age.

Furthermore, most of the detention centers are not constructed to facilitate wheelchair, most of

them do not include amenities like a grab bar, shower chair and even a wheelchair ramp which

the disable detainee requires to move, bathe and seek medical help. Mobility impairments

compounded by architectural barriers ensure that the disabled person is confined to small homes,

and their quality of life is loss since they spend lots of time indoors. Sensory impairments such as

hearing and vision impairment may result in loneliness and isolation for one due to lack of

assistance by the detention staff on issues to do with sign language or braille. Immigrants who

are detained are likely to have mental illnesses and intellectual disabilities than the general

population, immigrant detention centers lack sufficient staffing of well qualified mental health

specialists and appropriate requisite psychological assessment and management instruments. By

so doing, the lack of a favorable environment that is associated with the act of detention

minimizes high chances of the subject responding to the treatment since the condition also

provokes or exacerbates the psychiatric disorder.

The situation of detaining elders and disabled detainees with multiple chronic diseases

exacerbates limited detention center resources and staff and does not meet health and living

necessities. Stay in such centers which offer no care for the aged and the sick, and people with

disability, results to worsening of their health and living standards. Addressing the needs of the

vulnerable needs also involve problems of design/physical access, medical & psychiatric

workforce development, having specialized police officers, and establishing constant supervisory

bodies – things that any center cannot fund or does not wish to foot the bill. In this regard

P a g e | 45

detention fails to respect non-discrimination and anti-torture provisions for the elderly and the

disabled. Those that are within communities or specifically on health with set layouts for service

access, healthcare delivery, care givers and food security are more favorable for the vulnerable

while still allowing for but limited case management on immigration issues. Pertaining to

particular non-confinement solutions, adjustments for boosting conditions among detainees of

target are particularly essential.

d) Victims of torture and trafficking

Asylum seekers are most often people who have experienced such forms of treatment as torture,

human trafficking, and other forms of violence. Members of these groups are even more

susceptible than others, thus, they deserve additional protection in the immigration process.

Exiling torture and trafficking victims may lead to deterioration of the clients’ current and

previous mental and physical health problems from their abuse. Mental conditions such as

PTSD, anxiety, depression or chronic pain syndromes may be precipitated or worsened during

detention, especially when the conditions are reminiscent of captivity or abuse.

Further, the majority of the centers lacks medical and mental health care to offer the survivors

with severe abuse. Some detainees are not always shielded from harming themselves, or even

offered the right intervention to respond to past abuse by guards and other staff because workers

lack understanding of signs of prior abuse. Detention also comes with a higher risk of re-

exposure to trauma and further victimization for such practices as seclusion, restraint, strip

searches, no privacy, loss of control, and so on. Importantly though for the women and any other

vulnerable persons in this context, there are vulnerable structures in operation including the

lesbian, gay, bisexual and the transsexual persons.

P a g e | 46

This is the reason why extended and irrational confinement is dangerous for the recovery of

people who have been tortured or trafficked because they are constantly in a state of fear,

powerlessness and vulnerability. It can also reduce the interactions with community-based

networks and other services necessary for rehab. As detention is in its self a coercion and

restriction of freedom then putting already exploitive people through this system just

accumulates the previous maltreatment.

Rather, they require counseling and therapy, physical and mental health services, financial

support, safe shelter and other services or products which can only be obtained, for example,

within refugee resettlement and immigration services. Community-based case management helps

in coordinating care but at the same time supports the survivor and their recovery’s. Policy

reforms help victims attain a type of legal residency and are protected from detention and

deportation. When equipped with the correct tools or having the recovery model people from

serious trauma can begin to seek recovery, seek justice and claim their human rights.

e) Unaccompanied minors

Among all the vulnerable people it is possible to come across in immigration detention centers,

children who are alone are particularly helpless. These children and adolescents entered in this

country, without parents or relatives who could take care of them, so often coming as refugees of

violence or persecution in their own countries. Despite the fact that these children are young and

in some quite dangerous circumstances, they are transferred to facilities that do not cater for this

type of clientèle.

First of all, the age of the unaccompanied minors gives rise to concerns over the compatibility

of the detention environment with the developmental age of the detained person and the impact

P a g e | 47

that detention is likely to have on him/her. Lonely minors require stability, care and satisfactory

services while they are in awkward stages of their development. However, due to staff deficit and

lack of youth appropriate services, sheltered asylum-seeking minors cannot access adequate

mental health care to manage trauma that such a child might have experienced during migration

or to meet the needs of the situation they are exposed to. Also, the young people who are in the

process of growing up and who are not provided with parental care and upbringing are physically

exposed to dangers and diseases due to the congestion or lack of adequate care. Many

mechanisms and policies of screening, monitoring and preventing, which should be available to

children against violence, abuse or neglect are absent. S/he may not have received hearing,

vision, dental or mental health care; may not have received specialized medical care for children/

youths such as immunizations or the physicals among other possible EPSDT services. Thus,

detention may re-traumatize or delay the normal developmental processes for the UAMs during a

sensitive developmental age.

Some contributors have argued that because of the peculiarities, the children require to be

settled in communities and not detained. But there are still not enough of them; the few shelters

or foster programs that exist offer no psychological, instructional, or legal services which are

needed. Even worse, today’s immigration laws and policies provide virtually no distinction

between why children travel alone without any parents or guardians and why a single person

travels. Of course, there are indications to reforms that can help to address such problems;

however, the legislative procedure of their adoption is interrupted. In this way, an immense

number of children with no adequate care spend their time in detention centers that fail to serve

the children’s best and necessary interests during some of the crucial developmental phases.

P a g e | 48

f) Stateless persons

Immigration detention is particularly problematic in the treatment of stateless persons because

they are one of the most vulnerable groups. A stateless person is a citizen of no country and has

no legal documentation to prove that he or she belongs to any country. Since, they are unable to

produce any documents that may support their citizenship or legal residency, stateless people

frequently find themselves in a vicious cycle of detention. It is believed that there are 10-15

million stateless persons in the world. Most of them were born in countries that have practices

stripping of citizenship on ethnic, religious or racial considerations. Some lose their status

through administrative failures while other countries disintegrate or secede into several ones.

Stateless persons encounter difficulties in accessing fundamental human necessities such as

health care, education, employment or movement.

The lack of documentation that comes with statelessness makes them vulnerable to indefinite

detention when they migrate or apply for asylum. Since they have no country to go if repatriated,

they stand the risk of spending the rest of their lives incarcerated. Detention exacts a high price

with adverse effects on physical/mental health and no possibility of contesting one’s

statelessness, developmental setback for children. Detention itself is a violation of rights and

adding it to statelessness is inhuman especially to women and children. UNSCR 2317 requires

states to refrain from imprisoning stateless individuals based on their lack of citizenship alone.

However, in reality, nations keep stateless individuals detained for months or even years in poor

conditions without appropriate alternatives mainly because of this loophole in the legal

framework.

When developing humane policies for the legally vulnerable migrants, the countries should shift

away from the detention towards the community-based solutions. These could include the

P a g e | 49

structured release programs with case management services and temporary legal stay provisions.

Perhaps, more measures could assist in the eradication of stateless cases, such as improved

nationality checking measures, easier access to naturalization, and promises to prevent future

cases of statelessness. The detention of minor has lifelong impacts to their lives and thus, should

be released immediately to the child welfare services. While the multifaceted issues persist, there

is a range of choices for policymakers to protect fundamental rights, human dignity, and decent

living conditions for exceptionally vulnerable stateless detainees. Contemporary smart reforms

focused on social inclusion rather than exclusion show that countries can chart nuanced courses.

6. LEGAL CHALLENGES AND DUE PROCESS

Detention centers for immigrants in many nations have experienced more lawsuits and

condemnations over the right of migrants to a fair proceeding in the immigration courts. The

critics’ claim that in some of the centers asylum seekers and undocumented migrants have no or

limited legal rights, or are detained with no legal basis that is reasonable, proportionate and not

longer than necessary, and without a legal determination of the detention.

For instance, as it was seen in the United States, Supreme Court has ruled that detainees have a

constitutional right to bond hearings if they are detained for long, but immigration courts and

officials do not adhere to this. Detained migrants rarely if ever can have legal assistance, are

prohibited from in-person visits, frequently, have a limited understanding of the English

language, and can do little to collect evidence or documents to support their cases. Some of the

centers are situated in the rural areas hence there is restricted access to legal assistance and

equitable trials. Taken together these issues deny detainees realistic opportunities to challenge

their detention or removal on any basis whatsoever.

P a g e | 50

Considering these issues, there are norms and standards, national and international policies and

procedures in association with detention and detainees in present world such as United

Nations. These frameworks are utilized in order to prevent individuals from being detained in

unlawful and arbitrary ways in immigration issues. Key principles outlined include: restricting

detention to special circumstances, guaranteeing detainees right to have detention checked by a

judge periodically, guaranteeing detainees’ right to have a chance to object the detention and

providing detainees with a right to get consulted with an attorney periodically and privately.

Regarding these standards and detainee’s rights, some immigration scholars and human rights

activist offer recommendable models of immigration detention apart from mass confinement.

Some of the proposed models are the supervised release with sponsors in the community,

reported-in requirements, electronic monitoring programs. Of such solutions, the supporters have

argued that they could maintain the government’s engagement alongside increasing the odds of

receiving a fair trial. However, governments often use this as a reason for not reforming pointing

out that the process of enforcing migration laws and ensuring public safety has not ceased.

This is because immigration detention is still being carried out into the current society hence

having issues to do with detainee’s legal and human rights being relevant today. Supplementing

the current law, increasing the opportunities of residents in the litigation process, expanding the

available tools for calling to account, and studying other scenarios might be directions that could

assist in preventing the infringement of humane treatment paradigm. Nevertheless, the question

of how to adopt a real procedural protection for all those threatened with detention and

deportation remains an open one on this developing intersection between security policy,

international human rights norms, and domestic law.

P a g e | 51

a) Right to challenge detention

Detainees may legally appeal for the judicial redress or for a writ of habeas corpus for their

confinement under the international human rights law and several domestic laws and regulations.

However, the following several obstacles which the detainees encounter prevents or challenges

them not to access the right of access to the court in the real sense of the matter. The other major

issue is that detainees are often denied their right either to be informed of their right to have an

attorney or to consult with one. Most immigration detention facilities are located in more or less

remote areas and hence access to justice for detainees in the first place is difficult if not

impossible and if you want to offer bribes to the lawyers, be ready to spend big bucks. Another

area of concern is that language is a problem as far as availing rights as well as explaining legal

procedures to the detainees are concerned. In addition, some countries set high unjustified

legalities whereby detainees have to erase any doubt that they should not be detained, while in

International law, detention should be the usual case while freedom is the exception.

Detention also violates detainees’ right to seek release in the same way that it is violated even

more so when the detention period is unnecessary prolonged. Prolonged seclusion diminishes

one’s quality of life and hope, so those detainees should avoid seeking justice. They further mean

that even if on the side of the detainee, the court may take long sometimes release him or her

from detention, this is after years in detention, thereby negating the right to personal liberty. It is

frustrating to attempt to fight against a system that still holds people in detention, while the cases

take long in court. To protect due process rights in practice and policy the countries must legally

and operationally address review and the maximum detention period provisions where detainees

may not have free access to legal aid, interpretation, and non-custodial measures. Respecting the

detainees’ right to a fair trial to enable them seek a review of their detention meets their

P a g e | 52

humanity, density and integration within the destination country. Procedural justice also increases

levels of social justice, perceived legitimacy of detention procedures and individuals’ obedience

to rules.

b) Access to courts and legal aid

One significant issue that has been raised in the area of human rights and immigration

detainment is the fact that detainees are not privileged to courts and legal assistance. Due to

limited access, detainees cannot comprehend and practice their legal rights as required by the

provision. The issues with language include the fact that often the material is not translated and

interpreters are not always provided. The geographical location of the facilities also presents

other challenges relating to access to counsel and legal materials. Many centers are situated in

remote areas meaning that detainees are isolated from pro bono network attorneys.

Policies within the facilities continue to limit access, through restrictive measures. Certain

centers may limit the time that an attorney can spend visiting their client or even introduce

several hurdles of security clearance. They are monitored from time to time and visitors are

restricted, which is an intrusion on the clients’ privacy. Lead generation through legal mail is a

common method, but it is frequently ineffective because documents are often not processed or

are misplaced. Such barriers are inoperative with the principles of due process which erodes the

detainee’s capability to fight his or her detention. That is why, without the help of a lawyer,

people have problems with filing appeals, habeas corpus petitions, motions for reconsideration of

the cases. This may lead to long term detention or unfair deportation.

To address the due process rights, detention facilities should ensure that inmates are provided

proper legal mail. Access to large visitation policies should be guaranteed, and the availability of

P a g e | 53

private consultation rooms for attorney meetings should be guaranteed. There should be free

telephone calls and postage for legal documents. Allowing attorneys to visit could help decrease

the time that improper processing takes. Confidentiality of legal resources protects the rights of

clients by allowing the monitoring of any potential violation of rights. Apart from the policy

recommendations, more investment in the establishment of pro bono immigration networks by

the government may enhance the availability of legal representation. Others may be immigration

clinics in law schools for additional support.

Finally, ensuring that those in custody have access to legal professionals’ safeguards against

abuse of authority within institutions. It provides for judicial supervision of detention procedures,

thus strengthening the principle of the separation of powers. From a human rights point of view,

access ensures that the asylum seekers’ issues are given impartial consideration, thus avoiding

sending them back to the unfavorable circumstances. Apart from detainee rights, enhancing legal

access also fosters democratic tenets of governance and maintains confidence in institutions.

Scalia cited the words of Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, who said “Equal justice under

law is not merely a caption on the facade of the Supreme Court building. It is perhaps the most

inspiring ideal of our society. Justice must be the same in substance and in availability for the

rich and the poor.

c) Interpretation and language barriers

A related legal issue and one that infringes the detainees’ due process rights is the language and

interpretation quandary in immigration detention centers. Many detainees cannot read English or

understand a word of it and most of the legal documents as well as legal processes are conducted

in English and no quality interpretation services are availed. This also takes away from detainees

the ability to grasp some of the fundamental aspects of their case, charges preferred against them

P a g e | 54

and some options available to them sometimes. They cannot articulate themselves when

confronting a lawyer or in a hearing or even a procedure when looking into a custody case. The

lack of interpretation means that this person loses all legal claims, including almonds as well as

defense or motives for the committed offence. Detainees should have entitlement that the service

provider is mandated to meet and deliver accurate interpretation for all appropriate

communication in detainment.

But in real existence, such professional interpreters who can handle linguistic diversity of

detainees are limited in number. However, there is a lot of reliance on telephonic interpretation

services which are very inconsequential with poor audio causing a lot of havoc in any

conversation. To some extent it never has independent and impartial interpreters like those with

necessary accreditation as provided by the law and instead it employs fellow detainees with some

little English. This leads to confusion, wrong legal advice, forfeiting of time, misunderstanding

of cultures and wrong statements being passed to the detainees and wrongfully prosecuted. It is

thus necessary to design detention standards that are legally enforceable and funding, in order to

guarantee interpretation for detainees, including all the languages that these detainees use,

including the indigenous languages of recent border crossers and asylum seekers. A social need

for more bilingual legal employees or attorneys is also felt. Language interpretation violation

undermines Defendant’s rights to fair trial, and skewers the chances of getting justice in courts.

The absence of such recognition has to be remedied, in order to purify human rights within the

system of detention.

d) Length of detention and indefinite detention

The time that the immigrants are confined in the detention centers has become one of the

significant human rights issues. At present, laws and policies governing detention provide for

P a g e | 55

detention of persons without any limitation on the duration of detention. Prolonged and

indeterminate detention violates the rights of the detained persons under the international human

rights of due process and unlawful deprivation of liberty. Legal advocates who were presented

with the case said that civil detentions were unfair as it would take a person so long only for him

or her to be charged with immigration violation. For one or the other reason, it is not infrequent

that some of the immigrants spend many months, and at times even years in the detention as they

wait for the immigration case decisions. That it is possible to have such long detentions is a

result of the fact that there are no fixed hours required to be served in detention. They are then

held at the mercy of the immigration court system that is congested and takes a long time to

dispense with cases. This reliance to the administrative proceedings for determining the release is

not properly monitored and has the standardless fairness that is inherent in it. Scholars in law

have stated that elaborate measures to have the case conferences on a periodic basis or an

undertaking of custody hearing to deliberate on the continuing detention, should be initiated.

Many detention center detainees never get a right to counsel through the government and will

thus rarely get a chance to challenge their long-term detention. Since judges are now

overburdened by high caseloads, little supervision is paid to detention and those in it. A second

group of policy specialists insist on reforms to the legislation and regulatory acts – to mandate

reasonable restrictions on the number of days possible for detention at both the local and federal

levels. Other amendments could also include allowance of detainees to have routine bond

hearing so that it comes out whether there is need for continued detention because of certain

aspects such as its risk level and possibility of flight. Greater use of such efficient non-secure

programs through case management, and community supervision would mean reduced reliance

on incarceration since the individuals would have no option than to attend immigration hearings.

P a g e | 56

Providing more expeditious and dependable procedural protections and thereby eliminating the

miscreant system of infinite detainment would improve the compliance of human rights and

constitutional norms of detention. Reducing the major legal difficulties in a highly contentious

area of immigration control could be achieved through tackling the process issues and by

introducing some rational time limits of detention.

e) Immigration bail and bond systems

Immigration bail and bond in the United States being unconstitutional whereby deportees are

forced to accept expedited removal instead of fighting their cases has been criticized by the civil

right groups and immigration lawyers. Criminal suspects have rights under the Constitution as to

bailing but immigration detainees lack any of these rights. Control of those who qualify for

release on bond or bail is mainly in the hands of immigration judges, and they have been known

to set very high bails or deny it all together. One can imagine how difficult it becomes to

convince the world that one is a non-flight risk and is harmless to society if only because many

people are literally struggling for money and are deemed criminals by virtue of entering the

country without permission.

Judges put an average bond of 10,000 and above, such amounts are beyond reach by those in

the flee from poverty and civil conflicts in their countries. In other words, families are compelled

to persist in seeking ways to pay a detainee’s bond or deport the detainee so that they do not stay

in detention. While paying bond it does not mean that all other court cases are thrown out which

may take months if not years and one is always at the risk of being re-detained. Another

significant loss has been established by several studies estimating that detained aliens are

expelled from the United States at much higher rate than non-detained aliens without regard to

their admissibility under immigration laws. This goes to show that if one is detained, he or she

P a g e | 57

gets very limited time in which he or she can compile a case, and when one does not have

financial and legal support that come with the granting of bails.

As it shall be observed, critics argue that the discretionary detention system offers excessive

protection to judges and border officers while bonding decisions look quite arbitrary or even

biased in this context. Certain private prison corporations are reputed to have campaigned for

those policies that spur imprisonments and reduce parole. As a bare minimum, it may not be a

bad idea to make sure there are at least some modicum of constitutional protections regarding

detention, the conditions of release and bonding – which may in fact, do much to alleviating

some of the worst ills of the current system.

f) Deportation proceedings and appeals

Every alien detained and facing the threat of deportation out of the United States has

constitutional protection under the fifth amendment if the alien is arrested to afford the alien the

opportunity through the process of law, to seek a review of the detention and removal orders.

Based on research, most deportations are carried out though deportation proceedings and this is

normally started by a notice to appear before an immigration judge which explains the charges to

the immigrant and a chance to dispute his/her deportability. In these hearings the immigrations

can be represented, present their evidence and even give testimony on the case. But again, the

research papers reveal that over one half of the immigrants detained are unable to hire a lawyer

because they cannot pay for it. As this is, few understand the charges against them, or how to

apply for eligibility for relief properly.

If they are to be ordered removed, they may apply for a review by the Board of Immigration

Appeals (BIA) in the next thirty days. In deportation proceedings, the BIA is powerful, because it

P a g e | 58

has a competence to reverse any factual determinations made by immigration officers or courts;

to correct any procedural and other errors committed by immigration authorities; and to overturn

mistakes of judgment. For the third time detainees who are unable to hire an attorney are limited

in their ability to write eloquent briefs. As it has been established earlier the probabilities of an

appeal without an attorney in 2016 statistics were 3% while with an attorney, the probabilities

were 21%. After the decision of BIA, one can take an appeal to the federal circuit courts. But on

this stage, there is limited access to judicial review. In proceedings, it is not the function of the

court to go over findings of fact apart from where these are gross or substantial. Even to get to

the federal court, a party has to be represented by counsel fully aware of the difficulties that

come with presenting petitions for review. As it is now, due to no power granted to court to

appoint counsel in immigration cases, many genuine due process claims miss their day in court.

Some attempts have been made to enhance the appointed counsel and exercising a social equity

check but the issues did not receive enough attention. All in all, one should remember that

immigration detention interacts with several barriers that make it practically impossible for a

detainee to receive a fair process in a removal proceeding. Not surprisingly, one can single out

such areas of focus as constituted a pursuit of greater access to counsel.

7. PRIVATIZATION OF DETENTION CENTERS

Most of the immigration detention centers in the United States have recently been privatized and

the following is a list of human rights problems that have been observed. Since the 1980 onwards

there has been a notable change towards privatized detention centers, at the moment more than

seventy percent of immigration detainees are detained in facilities that are owned and operated

by private prison companies. CoreCivic and GeoGroup are two largest private detention

P a g e | 59

contractors, both operate several large facilities and play a significant role in immigration

debate.

The proponents of outsourcing argue that the private sector could do a better job in operating

the facilities and can solve the problem of the small space of the government owned centers.

However, there are serious issues raised by such large human rights organizations as amnesty

international on conditions, medical treatment and monitoring of the private facilities. Despite

the fact that these are government agencies, these are private corporations and are not monitored

and their main duty is to their shareholders, not detainees. They have referred to the desire for

profit which can cause compromising and even lowering of standards in some cases.

For instance, one can see low wages with staff; and ignorant handling of immigrants who are

vulnerable, translating into abuse and negligence. Conditions are substandard and as evidenced

by the high COVID-19 infections that occurred in the GEO’s Otay Mesa Center run by

CoreCivic. Very often, even the number of mental healthcare facilities is limited. Gang muggers,

cases that involve sexual assaults, or those that force are likely to happen than government

running centers. Other types of punish, including excluding from the contact with other people/

things/ right/ human dignity is also more present as well.

In general, the privatized model has left the goal of detaining people at a bare minimal, don’t

ask about the rights or due process. The rights groups have submitted the following: repealing

sections 499 and 502 on mandatory detention, de-criminalizing case management programs that

exist in the community instead of detaining people and improving supervision and monitoring of

private contractors on behalf of the government. This is in contrast to measures that are line with

a business-to-business perspective, a rights-based approach places the human rights and the

humanity of each individual detained under immigration measures at the center. Moreover, more

P a g e | 60

dramatic revolutions are inevitable in regard to the human rights problems related to detention

per se, to mention nothing of the privatized detention that enables some of the worst abuses

within the system.

a) Rise of private detention contractors

Prison industries and contractors that seek to make quick bucks out of detaining individuals have

been instrumental in the ongoing process of privatization of prisons in the United States of

America in the past few decades. The call for revenues, seeking affordable solutions for

rendering of services, together with pressures to increase the detainment facilities concerning

apprehensions of the illegal immigrants have cemented the place of private corporations as chief

confinement service providers of the immigrant detention centers contracted under the

government. More and more detention centers are run by private corporations, including

CoreCivic and GEO Group; many new facilities are run by contractors, rather than government

agencies. The following trend is in line with neoliberal postulates that are rather popular

regarding privatization and deregulation and has strengthened tendencies toward turning

detention into a profitable enterprise. However, the pursuit of profit through incarceration has

raised a lot of concern on human rights. Contractors can eliminate staff and healthcare and can

make cuts in food, maintenance, and meaningful program to have threats to basic needs for

systemic inhuman treatment. I also expect that contractors are less supervised and have easy

access to antidote which makes them more risk seeking than the government in general,

including in terms of risk-taking conditions like overcrowding, poor hygiene, deterioration in

order, violence etc. These unsafe environments are occupied mainly by the vulnerable migrants

and asylum seekers. Last of all, spatial politics and ‘bed mandates’ demanding one’s detention in

private prison must be at optimum occupancy level for their profitability results in arbitrariness,

P a g e | 61

indeterminacy, and absolute exclusion of procedure, liberty, or reasonable non-custodial

alternatives. In this manner, the influence of political economy of privatization has allowed

private prison contractors a free rein in operating America’s immigration prison complex;

however, immigration prisons represent the expansion of mass incarceration’s assault on human

dignity, health, and civil rights. Preventing such actors would therefore entail tackling the

structural issues such as privatization of prisons and endorsing the policies that fight arbitrary

means of confinement.

b) Cost analysis: public vs. private facilities

Among the variables that have been highlighted by those who are supporting the privatized and

the publicly operated facility are the cost aspect which can be understood as the cost advantage

of investing on the two facilities. Advocates of privatization state that with privatized facilities

the same service as direct governmental ones could be provided more cheaply inasmuch as

privatized facilities are more effective. However, the critics opine that if one looks into the

possibility of comparison between the cost of private facilities and that of the government

facilities then one will come to know that these facilities have done away with certain services

for the detainees. Most of the time, benefits enumerated require elaborate cost/benefit analyses to

be given, in order to be properly evaluated.

A study done in 2010 showed that the cost for each head per day in private detain facilities was

about sixty US dollars and that of the public facilities were more than ninety US dollars. But it

also talked about ways in which comparisons depend upon the geographic location of the

facilities as well as the size, age, and total detainees. When these factors are isolated, either the

costs may be equalized, or even the costs of COOs may be lower than those of LOOs. There are

also some misunderstandings of ‘Low-balling’, where some firms set very low price to win a

P a g e | 62

tender so as to acquire the business, then attempt to cost up once they start to executing the

tender. Certain researches have suggested that the savings achieved through privatization decline

with the period of contracts because firms endeavor to negotiate for higher charges.

It is worth pointing out that savings in the sector might be achieved through means like lower

wages paid to employees, and fewer employee frills, and more extensive facility space than in

similar ‘public’ areas. However, there is the human cost of extreme cost containment as a

revelation in the research done which reveal worse standards, overcrowding, inadequate health

care, and detainee abuses in some of the private facilities as compared to those that are publicly

run. In the study of privatized facilities, it is also important to mention that even where such

facilities cost less in the long run, they are not fully sufficient for meeting detainees’ needs as

well as for protecting their rights. The costs and human implications of the two models have to

form the core of any survey of the benefits of privatization of immigrant detention.

c) Accountability and oversight challenges

In many countries, the immigration detention centers have been privatized which actually raises

a problem in the sense that it is unclear how these centers can reduce their costs in order to make

profits and, simultaneously, provide decent treatment to the detained immigrants in a way that at

least does not completely violate their human rights. Some of these are private companies and

therefore do not have much transparency and do not come under the freedom of information act

as most of the public establishments. This lack of transparency means that assuredly there is no

external accountability whatsoever.

There is also no doubt that internal supervision is extremely weak as there are hardly any

autonomous supervisory agencies and very few obligatory codes of ethics or procedures to be

P a g e | 63

followed by the centers. In many outsourcing cases, organizational roles are mentioned vaguely,

providing minimal guidance on matters such as managerial responsibilities, handling of

prisoners, staff training and development, and condition and status of the protection and

maintenance of detentions centers. Unlike in public detention centers where tight rules and

regulations highly supersede the spirit of the immigration detained persons, private facilities can

easily fumble over the rules and have a blind eye towards detaining the best interest of the

detained immigrants so as to decrease on the cost implications. This may mean the absence or

rare chance of being treated by a doctor, lawyer, getting a chance to have fun, being fed properly

etc.

Other critics are quick to note that even where there are oversight bodies such as ICE they have

inherent tendency not to be very watchful especially on private colleges lest they stumble into

some issues that might endanger the multi-million dollar contracts. They also have minimal

powers in the financial aspect as the private prisons are exceptions under the freedom of

information act as far as the records of finance are concerned. Again, this lack of transparency as

to expenditures and revenues once more makes it easy for private corporations to cook the books

or hide expense line in order to look more cost efficient and thus put at risk detained immigrants.

Private facilities are thus a major human rights concern until such measures as unannounced

audits, mandatory reporting, whistleblower protection and higher fines for noncompliance are

introduced.

This is because, efficiency, cost cutting and profit making which are the cardinal vales of most

private corporations are inept to with the care and treatment that vulnerable detained populations

should be accorded. Until private detention centers have adequate independent third-party

monitoring, in addition to satisfactory human rights reporting mechanisms as required by law

P a g e | 64

that form part of legally enforceable contracts, there will remain substantial ongoing risks to the

physical and other human rights of detainees who are immigrants.

d) Profit motives and human rights concerns

The private management of immigration detention has raised several human rights concerns

mainly because the pursuit of commercially related interests does not align with care for

detainees’ rights and welfare. Private prisons are owned and operated by the several corporations

and these corporations take their directions from their shareholders, and no corporation works

with the interest of its shareholders in mind, and since making profits is the major aim of any

corporation, the options of cost cutting will always be on the table. This has been evidenced by

private prisons reducing the number of dollars they use to feed detainees, attend to their health

needs and that of their employees and in maintaining and repairing the detention centers. A 2016

study done by the Department of Justice highlighted that private prisons incurred more cases of

assaults and violation due to measures taken to reduce costs. This since this profit motivation

also pushes these corporations to influence policymakers and engage in policies to maintain high

detainment rates which in turn shows that shareholders’ benefits are valued more than detainee ‘s

welfare.

Several human rights NGOs have alleged that two major private prisons corporations – GEO

Group and CoreCivic – are involved in human rights violations, and have violated the World

Medical Association’s code of ethics on the practice of medicine for physicians and

psychologists. Some of the human rights violations include lack of appropriate medical attention,

dental care as well as mental health services, among the detainees. Center for Victims of Torture

launched a case against a contractor psychiatrist it accused of violating ethics. Such reports point

out the fact that private corporations have not learnt to govern themselves because they have

P a g e | 65

ethical and legal obligations to feed and cater for detainees. Some of today’s publics are still all-

day government managed choked with clients not sufficiently endowed with legal resources and

other humanitarian issues. But it is the profit-making motives of the private organizations for

which such issues appear to be much more magnified.

Hence, one may not dispute the fact that part of the responsibility when it comes to rights abuse

in detentions center lies with governments; which means that private corporates do not take on

such ethical and legal requirements on their own either. Also quite imperative to point out is the

fact that the main drive of most of these corporations seems to be economic and this in fact is the

main plausive cause of most of these human rights violations and concerns. Slightly improved

governmental control over the detention facilities could be helpful; however, the basic conflict

arises from the fact that detention facilities are operated as business, not humane affairs. This

conflict, however, should demand more policy attention now that more than seventy percent of

immigration detention beds are owned or managed by private corporations across the country.

e) Labor issues in private detention centers

Contracted immigrant detention centers are still being condemned for labor relations and

practices inside other immigrant detention centers in which immigrants are compelled to work as

detainees in many instances. While private prison companies argue that work programs provided

in their facilities reformat offenders and help them regain their independence, critics argue that

those programs are a mere exploitation of vulnerable people. They receive between and daily

wages, and they are engaged on jobs that are crucial to the operation of the facility such as

washing, cleaning, repairing, and cooking among others. Nonetheless, inadequate disclosure of

the workings of private facilities complicates the acquisition of intricate information on use of

P a g e | 66

detainee labor. What is public is rather worrisome trends – a 2021 report exposed that over 50%

of detainees in some of the private facilities had worked for the detention center.

It is for this reason that some human rights activists opine that private companies, which are not

‘captured’ by legal prohibition against use of forced labor, compel detainees into working almost

at throwaway wages. Being run without direct oversight from the state, private prisons enjoyed

substantial discretion as to what counts as adequate living conditions and what form of conduct

rules may apply to detainees: detainees can be forced into ‘work programs’ through such rules

which in reality are forced labor because those who refuse can have some of their basic needs

taken away from them. The concept of voluntariness is probably the most doubtful when

minorities with small decision-making power are confronted with profit-oriented corporations,

which have a limited degree of legal responsibility. However, when such a system is as opaque as

this one, it does not require a whole lot for abuses to occur without acting transparent to the

public.

Since the deportation and restriction of immigration is leading to continuous expansion of the

detention facilities, the advocates for the rights of the detained immigrants are afraid that

privatized profit will only increase the number of human rights abuses of the immigrants. They

want better and more regulation of private detentions and seek realistic standards of employer

and employee relation and detainee protection. Still, since detainees are in a status that they are

not bound prisoners but also not legally free immigrants, there are still questions about labor

rights and supervision barriers. The questions with regard to detainee labor in private immigrant

detention centers can hence be regarded as being part of the debate on or around immigration

policy and the privatization of imprisonment.

P a g e | 67

f) Case studies of privatization outcomes

Several such examples have been given in this article to demonstrate the adverse impact of the

privation of immigration detention centers in the US and the human rights violations on the

detainees. Some of these cases are the lack and poor health care in a CoreCivic detention center

in Otay Mesa, California. Holding from the government report, detainees suffer as it takes them a

long time before they could be treated and administered on for the painful injuries like fracture,

and depression among others. People failed to follow up with patients’ lab reports which pointed

towards extreme illnesses. Such medical negligence is apparent violation of norm of humane

imprisonment and depicts how the commercial interest that the private organizations possess is

capable of neglecting the basic services of health and human dignity.

Many a case has focused on the lack of any social contact and meaningful activity in the

Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, USA, operated by CoreCivic. This is true as inmates had

stated that they were confined to very small cells for as much as 23 hours and the limited time

they had out of their cells they actually spent most of it alone with little chance of anything that

would be mentally stimulating. Especially so where the detainees are held for long, such

conditions amount to a real possibility of severe psychological degeneration. The isolation

practices probably suggests that a private company can manage to make implementation of

measures that cut on the expenses on staffing and spaces for interaction or recreation in that, to

date there are no standard policies and procedures that have been set for such matters.

From Texas, for instance, one will learn how for-profit immigrant detention has increasingly

filled distant small towns to increased overpopulation and reliance of the towns’ economies on

detention. One town with numerous facilities saw their inhabitants double – with almost all the

Latino immigrants transported by buses from all corners of the country to fuel the detainee

P a g e | 68

supply for the local detention industry. The outcomes have disturbing questions of using detainee

as source of cheap labor and concentrically sited what was perceived as polluting industries that

were deemed to be incompatible with middle or upper class neighborhoods around established

detention centers for immigrants. This is where one comprehends the necessity to legislate for

ethical conduct and demand eradication of other heinous racial violations that the privatized,

market-oriented arrangements for detaining asylum seekers propound.

8. ALTERNATIVES TO DETENTION (ATD)

Some of the recent concerns bellied towards Immigration Detention Centers have been because

of the environment and the human rights immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers are subjected

to. Also known as community supervision, restrictive measures or immigration reporting,

Alternative to detention or ATD is a range of supervision modalities and programs that can

replace immigrant detention while guaranteeing that immigrants attend immigration hearings and

appointments. These are considered to be less brutal, less expensive and more compatible with

the human rights standards as compared to the conventional ones. Some of the ATD programs

are; the reporting requirements, home visits, using electronic monitoring by using anklets,

supported by caseworkers and living in a community house.

The following are some of the human rights that are violated in relation to immigration

detention centers: right to an attorney, right to medical care, right to nomadic shelter, and forcible

treatment, detention period, and holding families, children, the elderly, and from the LGBTQ

community. With regard to most of these concerns, they are not applicable to ATD programs as

the immigrants are entitled to live in community or their own homes rather than detention centers

while they seek and wait for legal immigration status. I have noticed that prison-like conditions

are replaced by case management and supervision, yet, the former ensure compliance. CBH also

P a g e | 69

affords legal assistance to the inhabitants as well as medical and childcare to the children, and

psychological counseling.

Growing the ATD programs is one of the best practices that reflects some of the principles

which are; exercising respect for the inherent dignity of the immigrants, no one can be detained

arbitrarily, immigrants should not be penalized for being immigrants, and every immigrant must

be presumed to be innocent. International predominantly the United Nations and other related

organizations have encouraged countries like the United States to embrace establishment of ATD

rather than detaining immigrants. Not even in terms of efficiency can the ATD programs be

compared to the detention centers where the costs are over 200 dollars per head per day, while

the ATD programs costs few dollars to $ 17 per head per day. While is it almost impossible to

argue with the benefits of ATD approaches, the concept of expanding these options is frowned

upon by the politicians and the population that seems to believe that the detention acts as a better

deterrent to the unauthorized immigration. There is the need for more advocacy and changes in

policy to move towards utilization of ATD with a focus detain only in exceptional circumstances

and for specific security threats. The human right grounds, moral reasons and information on

ATD call for it and make a decent practice instead of an exception.

a) Community-based supervision programs

In the recent past there has been a rising trend in community-based supervision programs and

this has been occasioned by the upsurge in the number of immigration detention centers. These

programs are better than detaining immigrants as the people involved in these processes, are able

to reside in various local communities while waiting for their immigration cases to be processed.

The participants are to attend case workers meetings and review sessions, have appointments

with immigration officers to check on them, have home visits, and must provide bond or have an

P a g e | 70

electronic monitoring anklet. More specifically, the core purpose is to enforce people’s

compliance with court hearings and decisions, therefore providing case coordination and

community services instead of imprisonment.

Community supervision has been supported by many advocacy organizations and policy

institutes as being less expensive, less harsh and will allow immigrants obtain legal help, work

and stay with their families. Organizations which are non-profit and engage in the running of

pilot programs have disclosed a compliance level of 97% when it comes to attendance of court.

Moreover, some investigations show that participants of the community-based programs are

more likely to receive appropriate legal assistance for their cases and more likely to achieve

positive outcomes at the final stage of a case and win asylum cases. Detention centers currently

cost 134 dollars per a person per day and non-profit community programs for the detained, 5

dollars for a person per a day, thus proving that the community-based reforms, are fiscally

efficient means of saving the taxpayers’ money as well as preserving the due process and family

unity.

However, community-based supervision has not been fully recognized, or has not been

practiced fully across the country. For this reason, some politicians and citizens say that ankle

monitors and regular meetings are “catch and release” programs for which immigrants can avoid

police. Moreover, staffing and resources in non-profit organizations may be limited to meet a

ballooning of such programs. However, with issues such as overcrowding, human rights abuses,

and legal issues arising over detentions centers, community-based supervision programs hold a

case management model away from detention issues. If it is given enough money and

supervision, scale up of these programs can achieve the necessary reductions in detention and the

P a g e | 71

benchmarking of compliance with the law and significant cost reductions while maintaining an

acceptable level of decency and fairness at a minimum.

b) Electronic monitoring and reporting

Recalling the concept of outsourcing, it should be noted that electronic monitoring and reporting

programs for persons in recent years have been more realistic and correct from the standpoint of

human rights than immigration centers. Rather than people being confined in facilities that

resemble penitentiaries, electronic monitoring involves wearing an electronic bracelet that is

connected to the GPS, an individual has to check in with the case manager either by phone or

through the Internet, or physically. These combined tools allow immigration officials to track

suspect individuals as cases evolve or asylum hearings take place to remove the flight risk

danger without constitution violation through detention. Optimal models of e-monitoring can

give the opportunity to put only limited restrictions on movement and interaction with other

people simultaneously with the provision of the necessary tools for case management and their

resolution.

Aside from immigration detention other fundamental advantages of appropriate electronic

monitoring include the cost question and the human rights concern. But when one looks at

Americas per capita costs have reduced greatly because reduction of dependence on detention

centers that require a lot of infrastructure and personnel have been done away. In the same way,

all persons other than those detained have their families and communities, through which they

can stay in touch; and, thereby, it is possible to minimize the risk of social withdrawal and

enhance the physical and psychological well-being. Together with this, it is much easier to reach

legal help when one lives outside carceral spaces; however, this is a right that, due to the location

of DET centers and their regulations, many people cannot access. In this regard, electronic

P a g e | 72

monitoring is less invasive and more consistent with the human rights conventions, which

require non derogation of rights and prohibitions on torture, inhuman, degrading treatment or

punishment if the detainees are to be protected against these documented abuses in those

detention facilities. Thus, electronic monitoring allows immigration judges and officials to

practice reasonable and appropriate community release regimes instead of systematic right-

abusing detention systems. Since technologies in other fields are also expected to advance in the

coming years, more enhancements in the design’s efficiency and ease can lead to even greater

acceptance of the sort of alternative programs. Taking technologies like electronic tracking and

reporting into release decision processes aids in making functioning, immigration systems which

are also accountable for other public policy goals for borders, impartiality and minimally

acceptable human rights for the vulnerable or displaced.

c) Case management and social support models

Both case management and social support models are more humane that detention in

immigration detention centers. Unlike detention where migrants have to be detained in order to

compel them to adhere to their status in migration, case management implicates use of

casemakers as well as placement of migrants in community places to guarantee they undertake

immigration processes. This approach is a one-to-one case management service which covers

strictly legal compliance strategies that need to be implemented. To the migrants, the

caseworkers help in getting appointments with doctors, lawyers, housing, schools for the

dependent children, learning of new languages, vocational training and other social services. The

Engagement and Natural Support Model: Engagement in activities that transgress immigration

conditions flank independence and isolation which are factors that are disempowered by

pretensions to case management models that link migrants to communities. Furthermore, in most

P a g e | 73

cases, informal trust-based relationships between case managers and their migrant clients allow

regularly and honestly speaking about any issues connected with responsibilities for

immigration. The researchers proved that the combined approach of delivering the supportive

services for the asylum seekers and the formal supervision leads to high asylum seekers’

attendance, more than 95 per cent immigration hearings. According to cost analysis on cost-

utility, dollar-based estimate of community-based case management was $ 24 per individual per

day, while on the same note, the cost of immigration detention was found to be $ 150 individual

per day. Thus, case management can be envisaged as a less ethically dubious model with a right

for human rights compliance and economic gains. However, it is important to note that some

countries including Canada, Sweden and Australia have adopted programs of case management

other than detentions for some categories of migrant. As the pressure for immigration change in

America increases, case management should not be left out mainly because detention is proven

to take a toll on the physical and mental health of immigrants and refugees. Implementing case

management models for the vulnerable population would therefore imply; an improvement on

the rights, human dignity and general well-being of the migrants.

d) Open or semi-open facilities

Other options normalizing are the community or semi-community styles that in one or another

way can become potential substitutes to conventional immigration detention centers. In contrast

to the concept of prison that involves construction of walls and containment of people as the

form of detention, such establishments offer the formulation of freedom in this community to

persons awaiting their cases to be heard in immigration courts. They have to be registered and

de-registered at some point and even have restricted times of accesses and bedtime but they can

still live their own lives, make their own choices, even control time and get certain needs meet.

P a g e | 74

The following are the ways in which the described ATD model is considerate of human rights:

As such, by not directly negating liberty and allowing the residents to regain their recognition

and respect for themselves, and the ability to control their lives on daily basis, open/semi-open

shelters had moderated the negative psycho-social effects of detention. As for the factors that

might promote the increase of the immigration procedure compliance, they are contacting the

lawyer more freely to develop a case, enrolling children to the local school to minimize the

interruption of their development; and keeping family/community ties as they have been found to

improve the compliance with procedures. The home- or shelter-based case management

programs that are frequently used in parallel with open facilities also maintain constructive

relations with the authorities by constantly interacting with them. Combined, these actions look

more like the conditions in which asylum seekers, and migrants, in general, might thrive or work

towards their recovery from trauma that they commonly experience during migration, integrate

into the community and fully adhere to the legal demands of immigration status.

A number of countries in Europe, the Americas, and Australasia have adopted open/semi-open

shelters and appear have been successful in maintaining appearance rates and preventing escape.

Admirers also note economic rationality compared to detention; in 2014–2015, Spain used 35

USD for an average daily count of person for the ATD network and 75 USD for detention. Some

can be the added cost of expenses on the part of case management, somatic and mental health,

and socio-economic assistance that is necessary to bring stability to those residents who have

been exposed to pre-migration trauma, discrimination, poverty and separation from families, and

no prospects of employment. However, newer studies show that the disposed models give greater

credence to rights, proportionality as well as the integrity of families under the 1951 Refugee

Convention and least a threat to public safety and enforcement – thus independently attesting the

P a g e | 75

perenniallity of future use as immigration enforcement transforms to a shoving human rights-

based personal approach.

e) Cost-effectiveness of alternatives

Among the considerations when reviewing each of them as a possible ATD, one of the criteria is

the degree to which the cost of each of them is less than the cost of keeping the system of

detention centers for immigrants. Although the facilities for immigration detention are perhaps a

means of exercising legal control and supervision over immigrants, it is uneconomical and

expensive to keep individuals detained for such a long time which also gives rise to some human

rights abuses. Substituting the more case-management oriented system with ATDs should be able

to meet the aim of immigration enforcement supervision at a lower cost; several nations that

have implemented the use of ATDs report of heightened compliance rates at a lesser cost. Use of

ankle bracelets and voice identification for check-ins, home visits for reporting of case

management have also been found efficient with an intensive supervision program. Compared to

detention centers, where inmates pay between 4 to 9 a day, house arrest through ankle bracelets,

it’s a mere to per day, per person. Another form of ATD includes community residential facilities

for rehabilitation and reintegration, but only if providing the following services for certain

categories of non-citizens: asylum seekers or families with reported compliance rate above 80%;

such facilities operate at considerable cost savings compared with detention.

The use of alternatives would eliminate several physical and mental illnesses prejudiced on

immigrants due to staying at detention places that brought diseases and insufficient medical

treatment. With regard to community-based approaches, return to rehabilitation and reporting of

compliance helps in the shifting from the search for status immigrant solutions to more

appropriate solutions and coordination of the negative effects and oversight objectives.

P a g e | 76

Employing the ATDs at the initial stage of the legal proceedings based on integration and support

increases performance and financial effectiveness, even if legal status is to be denied eventually.

There are more countries that should actualize the fact-based ATD frameworks in order to

engineer a better, less inhumane and cheaper immigration system.

f) Challenges in implementing ATD programs

Attempting to mainstream large scale alternatives to immigration detention schemes is full of

practical and political difficulties. At practical level the implementation of community

supervision program requires substantial organizational capital investment in terms of

infrastructural development, human resources as well training. Recruiting and training should be

done for officers in non-custodial supervision, equipment for electronic tagging should be

procured, links should be built with local NGOs to outsource case management services and

reporting centers have to be leased and fitted. These require big investments that governments

may not be willing or financially capable of making especially when enforcing immigration laws

receives little funding. Yet, the providers have to cope with perceptions that the community-

based options for immigrants are weak on violation of the immigration laws. Politically, people’s

access to broader ATDs is contingent upon their governments’ willingness to respect the

structural immigration court practices over immigration law via detention. But nationalistic and

law-and-order political stances continue to press decision makers into focusing on detention and

deportation rather than developing a variety of less harsh and more humane and effective

measures consistent with human rights and financially sensible. In such a context, officials may

decide on appropriate conditions that are too strict on the eligibility criteria or the number and

type of reports required to access ATD and hence reducing on the participation rates. However,

political factors are volatile instruments and are likely to undergo a change in the future, which

P a g e | 77

may cause a change in future support and attention to ATD programs. Thus, leaders must invest

and mobilize public approval by ‘mainstream’ and Nationalist politicians in the more precise,

non-alarming use of detention and ATDs as long-term solutions instead of complementary

methods fit for the age of mass migration. Responding to these questions is management and

politics and is never complete.

9. CHILD-SPECIFIC CONCERNS AND FAMILY SEPARATION

The immigrant policies of the America have prompted many controversies in regard to

immigrants and children rights such as, the detention of immigrant children and families and the

in appropriate standard and treatment required by the children. Of late there has been an increase

in the rate in which family detention centers are being established, and children migrating

individually in search of asylum. But the situation with the children in detention centers does not

always comply even with basic criteria for the protection of children’s rights. Many compounds

are confinement institutions, and there are relative few accommodations for the fact that the

inhabitants are minors. The confinement measure has been reported by the American Academy

of Pediatrics to have the ability of causing psychological impacts and trauma in children even for

a short period. Specific to the places of detainment of families several problems are that children

here are not given proper education, play, medical attention, food, lawyers and other needs are

met. Signs point to people being cooped up in their houses, or only venturing out in specific

manners or areas. However, as a result of the novel policy shifts, the raw count of families

directly translates into the problem. There is adding more distress by removing a child from the

family and not sharing plans of reunification as it aggravates the effects that are both short-term

and long-term adverse to the development of the child. Science has it that such ACEs impinges

on the brain and leads to the promotion of prolonged disorders hence unhealthy lifestyles, mental

P a g e | 78

disorders and other substance use or social problems in adulthood. While there have been moves

that have sought to check the circumstances under which family members are separated through

court, there are questions that arise as to how those families that have been separated for so long

will be reunited. Concerns specific to children that are potentially addressable are community-

based case management programs that would ensure that immigrant families and unaccompanied

minors could be connected with legal, health, housing and other services other than detention.

The following policy interventions may reduce these concerns of family separation and lack of

child-sensitive care in detention environments: Exploring the possibility of family reunification

so that families can be released jointly as they wait for their immigration disposition results in

the society. Looking at child protection, legality, principles of decency and health interests, one

gets the signal of the need to come up with other measures that would ensure that immigrant

families are preserved intact in an environment that respects the rights of children immigrating

into other countries. Thus, it is proved that children detention in the framework of immigration

policy and procedures should be reconsidered with reference to the trauma impact and the fact

that the children are in very sensitive position.

a) Impact of detention on child development

The impact of immigration detention on the child’s development is detrimental even if the effects

are not visible for the rest of the child’s life. The findings show that children in detention centers

fall at least at a moderate level of emotional disturbance, anxiety, or depression or have PTSD

symptoms. Several of these symptoms are similar across many, and these include the

developmental regressed, the clingy child, the child who is lost for words, and the child who has

difficulty with toilet training, and the slowed motor and cognitive development, and the sleep

P a g e | 79

disturbance. What can be stated conclusively is that detention results in adverse effects to the

mental health of children even if the period of detention is a short one.

Detention affects the intimate parent-child bond in a special way because it happens during the

early childhood. Most significantly, some capacities of the parent-child relations disappear or are

weakened, in particular the ability to protect a child and comfort him/her in distressing

conditions of confinement. Being under close supervision and surveillance, children are

overshadowed and do not get an opportunity to be normal children playing. It is worse when one

is separated with a primary caregiver, because kids separated from parents are inclined to distort

their psychiatric disorders. Grief, disenfranchised grief and separation-related loss, and lack of

information as to why children were separated from their parents in the first place, lead to self-

blame in the children.

In light with the consequences on psychological health, other physical health effects of

confinement will cause developmental impact of children through malnutrition due to rationed

food, lack of light and places of physical activities, and increased chances of contacting diseases

from congested accommodation. In the large percentage of the detained SAS children,

developmental impairments in all the domains are apparent through delays in development.

It is difficult to calculate the extent of the damage that long-term detention has on the

psychological and physical growth of people who are young. Disruption of development during

these formative periods has a domino effect in later life on mental health, family and individual

development and accomplishments. The available literature shows that even when children have

been locked up for months or years, upon release they leave with psychiatric conditions, with no

sleep, and engaging in traumatic play, years later. When children are separated from their parents

or detained, especially when such figures are important within a normal development cycle, it is

P a g e | 80

painful, with compound social cost and incidence, and with intergenerational public health

consequences.

b) Family separation policies and practices

The increase in the number of family separations especially at the US-Mexico border was drawn

by the Trump administration ‘zero tolerance’ policy that was began in the year 2018. Where

previous presidents may have been able to separate families only in such rare circumstances as

when the parent posed a threat to the child’s wellbeing, this zero-tolerance policy saw the

separation of nearly 3,000 children from their parents with the intention of discouraging the

unlawful entry into the country. The physical suffering that ensues from detaining children,

including infants and toddlers separately from their caregivers and detaining them alone is a

major human rights question. After journeying through prison, children who were detained

demonstrated symptoms of depression and anxiety, anger and loss of developmental milestones

in conditions that far from met any standard childcare. After a massive outrage at the national

and international level, President Trump put his signature on another executive order to cease the

normal procedure of separating families under the zero-tolerance policy. The administration had

no effective ways of establishing the separated families and this caused a lot of confusion. Some

advocates later said that they have identified several hundred more children that were separated

up to a year before the end of the zero-tolerance policy. However, the current trends show that

5,561 kids have been reported lost from their parents or other caregivers in general, from 2017

primarily for re- recorded minor delinquency. The further discussion of separations in each case

is still unclear, in particular because there are no child welfare professionals in immigration

enforcement bodies. Even more problematic is the absence of more precise detail on how to

justify the separations and how to guarantee that reunifications take place shortly. Although,

P a g e | 81

family separation might have been reduced after zero-tolerance, the advocacy groups are still

insisting on the new Biden government to make laws and policies that protect children and allow

family reunion as provided in the human rights conventions. Some policy options that can be

taken are ending placement for no current threat to the kid, guaranteeing permanent appointed

kid’s attorney for detained kids, granting detained parents and kids with licensed practices in

social workers, developmental specialists, trauma- informed mental health care raising legal aid

to speed up reunification.

c) Education access for detained children

The migrant children detained in the immigration detention centers have very limited legal rights

as regards education. Detention standards recommend that children be offered coursework from

accredited academic institutions; few children participate in any instructed activities. Difficulties

such as limited teaching and learning resources, shortage of qualified teachers, language issues,

and uncertainty of short and long periods of seclusion make it credible to provide quality

education. Taliban completely deny the right to education to children, while the centers they

offer are giving children paper-based worksheets from time to time instead of Curriculum

Accreditation that leads to the deterioration of the children’s academic and social progress.

Such learning loss affects other concerns specific to children on family separation and

detention. Improper and inconsistent learning distorts social and emotional adjustments to

forcible separation from parents and other caregivers. Improper lessons or lessons that the

children may not find interesting leave them to be more overwhelmed with isolation, anxiety and

depression when they are in detention centers. The deficits also add up in as much as children

remain detained and such issues affect their emotional, behavioral development and learning.

Discontinuity also produces Interruptions in education records that hinder children’s

P a g e | 82

reintegration into neighborhood schools under release; the same equals other barriers in

education and social reintegration.

Education for the detained immigrant children has turned out to be an organizational challenge,

but is essential to uphold the children’s rights and needs to be attended to avoid future effects.

Migration or even custody laws of different countries promise children their rights to education

and socio-emotional development. Perceived system deficiencies for learners’ concern increasing

the accessibility of accredited curriculum and teachers in treatment centers as well as increasing

the availability of non-educational community-based instruction where possible. Therefore, a

developed model of educational services for the client and more specifically for his or her

language and developmental needs will dramatically improve their psychosocial quality of life

and social inclusion for one of the most neglected populations. Last but not the least, all the

rounded up immigrant children should be given equal opportunity to be educated, education

should be one of the human rights that should always be protected irrespective of the

circumstances of the childhood.

d) Child-friendly spaces in detention settings

It is proper that children in immigration detention get proper spaces to survive considering their

vulnerable situation. Under human rights standard, in the best interest of child, any child is

supposed to be provided for. Due to the fact that AS children are in their developmental stages,

they therefore have developmental, emotional and social necessities which are not similar to

those of grown-ups. Keeping a child for a long time or permanently compromises the

development of the child especially if families have been split. To solve such problems detention

centers could provide areas for families and children as well as programs concerning physical

and intellectual activities of the child’s development.

P a g e | 83

In an ideal world, these child-friendly areas would have toys and games, books and drawing

materials, computer and other gadgets, which will assist the children to study and play and also

be able to inter - act with other detained children and families. With capacity, youth workers

would be able to involve the children in learning activities, games, sports, art work and group

management with sensitization that they are refugees. These areas could be small furniture for

instance child-size furniture, pleasurable color and adornments with positive utterances in a bid

to help the children feel welcomed instead of being in bare environments. Micro school setting

gives a feel of school which has some order and orderliness. Privacy and home like features

make it possible for families, detained to spend quality recreational time together while the

environment remains otherwise stressful.

Outdoor and especially the green areas are important in the exercise and sunshine vitamin that

helps in physical as well as emotional development of the kids. To ensure availability of

adequate means in case of need, medical and mental health professionals’ staff is present or

referred for children, trauma specific for pediatric patients. The above measures it is hoped will

mitigate rather than compound traumatic circumstances in unpredictable detentions. If

environments are to be designed that are not only for children but are unfit or unsafe for

children’s developmental stages, the most vulnerable will be worse off. Consequently, human

rights law has an expectation placed on it such that standards are expected to be met during brief

detentions. Hence the policy making was not absolutely neglected of care since there were

suitable places that enhance children’s welfare although in a restricted area. Still, it is placement

into community-based alternatives with family preservation that is most of the time more

advantageous to children. Growing children have needs more encompassing than can be pinned

to migration policy and therefore it is within legal provisions to meet those needs.

P a g e | 84

e) Alternatives to detaining children and families

There are many other ways that society can be protected from such people than detaining

immigrants and their children, in effect dehumanizing the little immigrants. The first is the

reunification through the community supervision programs that entails offering of legal and

social services and a prompt that the families have court dates and ICE appointments. Such

program has had high compliance rates as high as ninety percent in appearances at much lower

cost than detention. Similarly, case management programs then enroll the participants with a case

manager who provides linkages to other services such as referrals to pro bono attorneys and

assistance in sourcing for shelter and healthcare, and other needs that go a long way in ensuring

that the immigrants are able to attend the court sessions without being detained. Nevertheless,

such programs remain the exception rather than the rule in the country in implementing the

program.

Another program is of open family shelters where basic accommodation is provided for asylum

seeking families not suitable for a locked setting. Shelters provide for families’ basic needs of

food, clothes, education for children, legal support and medical facilities to families for as long

as they wait for the determination of their claims. Such facilities only ensure that the residents

are lock up in their rooms during curtail and arbitrary searches. Such programs are far better than

the detention models as supported by data; however, government financing for such programs is

still limited. The present US Congress has endorsed 5 million for family case management for

the current financial year 2018 which is just peanuts when one considers the task. A fund of 8

billion for immigration detention. If more funding is provided, more vulnerable immigration

detainees can be stopped from being placed in substandard detention centers with negligible risks

to the public if managed appropriately.

P a g e | 85

f) Reunification challenges post-detention

The focus should be made on the idea of the consequences a child suffers from due to the

separation and detention of his/her family. Being released and reunited, the members of the

separated families need significant amount of psychological, emotional, and practical assistance

in order to become whole again and reintegrate into the society. The children get to point the

finger at the parents for the split and suffering, while the parents struggle to regain the children’s

trust and control. Details of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, anger, and

attachment disorder, as well as learning disabilities caused by neglect during detentions were

some of the symptomatic behaviors portrayed by children. It is also a necessity to rebuild the

confidence and security of company of the parent child relationship back after the children were

left feeling abandoned during durations of separation. Concerns of practical nature also exert

much pressure on families after reunification – housing, income-earning, transport, childcare and

medical services with no transitions. Some sort of stability is provided by school and extra

curriculum activities but it has its own set of papers families struggle to get. Parents who were

evacuated and who could not claim or produce identification documents or related paperwork

could not access related services as well as reintegrate into societies. As with children some

parents detain in the centers even after they release their children to sponsors hence complicating

the process of separation and reunification. Among the indigenous people big families are always

the ones that take care of the children – detaining hinders such networks, which are very

essential in the upbringing of children. When children are released with family or sponsors, post-

detention transition is very hard even to this date. If the source of trauma is neglected, volatility

persists across poor, violent, exploitative, insecure, discriminated, and retrial P, C, and/or S

cycles that give both the generation in question as well as the subsequent generations the

opportunity to suffer. Whole family care instead of putting the child in an institution, case

P a g e | 86

management which involves trying to get the child’s parents suitable or suitable substitute care

and community-based care services are important at the time of reunification after detention.

Housing, mental health care, civil legal aid, employment, education, building trust and networks

of care as necessary to enable most families to rebuild themselves after release. It cannot just

return families to the state of poverty and social exclusion; there has to be real support after the

separations that unfair detention systems produce. In other words, a degree of post-detention

harm prevention implies that it also implies responsible policymaking and the community and

social services that allow families not just to scrape together a bare existence but to thrive.

10. HEALTH AND MEDICAL CARE IN DETENTION

From a human rights’ perspective, the health and medical care services for the immigrants in the

detention centers have been a major concern for a long time. Human rights violation in these

facilities entails that the inmates get little or no medical care that they are qualified to get and

they also suffer poor living conditions that bring about diseases, both physical and mental

diseases. In one way or another, all the concerns related to health care can be linked to the

process of the growth of the immigration detention system, which put a great deal of pressure on

the existing concepts and possibilities. Inasmuch as there can emerge a shortage of medical staff

to meet the degree of demand within detainees; the groups are disadvantaged that may include

individuals suffering from one or several underlying health conditions or chronic diseases.

Language and cultural barriers also make it difficult in diagnosis, treatment and even

understanding and signing of consent forms. Compliments of interpretation, detainees have a

difficult time explaining their symptoms adequately, and doctors can miss important details.

What more, some of the centers are situated in rural regions, and it becomes very hard to move

the specialists around should they be needed in complicated cases of ailment among the

P a g e | 87

detainees. This is especially the case given high levels of reported mental illness and trauma

among detainees, translators, and other improvised personnel: there is a need for more

counselors than are currently staffed in most facilities at the present.

Moreover, in what concerns the structural factors, the possibility and organization of

functioning of the centers and the architectural design of these spaces can be negative for

wellbeing. The conditions of punishment prevail in such environments above the conditions of

restoration that should be provided when a person is ill. Vital correlates of play and exercise,

healthy diet, and good social relationships – in relation to mental/physical health – are rare. This

is because it is very easy for communicable diseases to spread round the most of large groups

because they are usually packed in a small area. A neglect of the follow up with compliant or

ordinary appointments can progress a manageable disease to an emergency. Any treatment that is

outside the school incurs other transportation/security expenses that the administrators are not

ready to bear.

Thus, it can be seen that the bad quality of the health care that detainees are provided with in

immigration detention is a contradiction of human rights for everyone. It does not conform with

provisions prescribed by experts such as the United Nations Nelson Mandela Rules concerning

prisoners’ treatment. However, if radical changes are not going to be made, the prospect of a

resolution to this state of affairs can be considered rather doubtful. Some genuinely radical

voices exist that even speak of the total abolition of detention as a concept. Some propose

interventions based on purely community level with case management/referral to the existing

health systems. Other questions arise as to the applicability of such alternatives to a greater

degree. Thus, health and medical care remains threatened: one of the fields which need

P a g e | 88

reformulation from the outside pressure, it will remain a ‘weak link’ the longer systematic

change is not demanded.

a) Access to healthcare services

Insufficient provision of health care services in detention facilities for immigrants. Some of

these detainees may, therefore, be suffering from, or be prone to develop, other ailments due to

physical ailments acquired during migration, effects of stress resulting from detainment, or even

be prone to be affected by infectious diseases prevalent in crowded detaining places. However,

numerous reports indicate that patients are given suboptimal care because of staff scarcity,

attending workforce, and language barriers, bad pre-screen and pre-appointment and follow-up

and policies that bar patients from sourcing treatment elsewhere.

Other sub-categories of MCH services may also be considerably underdeveloped; there may be

no Communicational health services, no basic preventative services such as vaccines;

Reproductive health services may also be limited. In most cases, the detainee’s complaints, or

even medical, allegations are left unaddressed since they are sandwiched between mechanized

procedures. This is a situation whereby some diseases which may not require many efforts to be

cured compound and become very hard to treat. Even critical conditions are sometimes met with

a response that contains no sense of the critical.

To meet ethical obligation and legal liabilities for care, the service standard of medical services

in detention must be upgraded to the community health standard. It was felt that detainees should

be assessed and identified as to the requirements they possess, and the clinic staff that should be

able to identify and treat the said requirements, and if not, refer the detainees to other health care

professionals outside the clinic. Thus, the centers may be situated at a considerable geographical

P a g e | 89

distance that the centers may not closely interact with other structures like hospitals. Custody

trained officers can enhance the triage procedures, recognizance appointment maybe attained

through the use of recognizance programs and telemedicine provides a way of accessing experts

at an arm’s length.

Nevertheless, the role of on-demand services with the assistance help of interpreter services

cannot be overemphasized in the daily Health Care. That is why staffing quotas needs to be tied

to the levels of patient acuity to make staffing adequate while at the same time providing funds

for competitive compensation for the talented workers. Prescribing of electronic records could

also assist in increase of the efficiency of case management hence leading to continuity of care.

In all the measures, human rights principles of humane treatment attached to the reform

processes.

The types of care tasks are also comparable to those in comparable institutions, such as nursing

homes, and as a result, the forms of supervision are also similar: from regulator evaluations to

outside checks. To some extent, rights advocacy also prevents state’s autonomy by providing

power check in the sense that it grants equal rights to every person. As detention is still an option

defensible in law, it is high time that, at least, procedures of delivering heath care in detention

facilities respect detainees’ dignity.

b) Management of chronic illnesses

One of the most challenging tasks that detention centers face is how to handle the case of chronic

diseases among immigrants. The detainees are considered to have multiple-comorbidities or

chronic diseases including diabetes, hypertension, Asthma, HIV among others which would need

long-term monitors and care immediately they are admitted into such facilities. However,

P a g e | 90

detention centers do not have adequate number of physicians and hospital to sufficiently provide

such qualitative treatment. For example, a cross-sectional study done in the year 2016 showed

that 55 percent of the detention facilities claimed to have onsite daily availability of physician,

nurse practitioners, or a physician assistant. Since there is usually no extensive on-site medical

support, it may not be easy to manage medications, testing, and referrals and to treat one, two, or

more chronic conditions simultaneously.

These difficulties of care coordination are compounded by the frequent transfer of detainees

from one center to another. The patient can be transferred from one health facility to another, this

destroys their rapport with the doctors handling their case. They may spend weeks awaiting to be

re-medicated or tests to be done or even to have their therapy proceed after being transferred to

another area. The consequences can be fatal; one research established that the mortality rate of

transferred detainees was ten folds higher. It is impossible to offer quality care to chronic

illnesses randomly within the various organizations, without standard procedures of managing

those illnesses, and without a way of sharing patients’ information.

Language barriers are also one of the reasons that make it impossible to adequately address the

chronic diseases among immigrant detainees. Allowing the professional interpreters for medical

visits, translating of the health information from one language to another, and hiring more and

more translators may mark some major transformation. One survey aimed at pretrial detainees

and in another survey, as much as 89. 7% of the time the detainees received suboptimal

interpreter services during medical consultations. This means that in case of no capacity to

communicate health information to other people or receive similar from them, detainees cannot

optimize on processes involving health.

P a g e | 91

Detention per se contains internal challenges concerning adequate management of chronic

illness. These geographical barriers, together with the circumstance that many of the stations are

located far away from the continental territories, and the carceral context of most of the detention

centers are numerous transfer and staffing problems, record keeping and language and available

resources all combine to undermine the capability of the detention centers to respond to

detainees’ health care needs in the long term. To change the existing immigration detention

system, the following principles should be considered: such as human rights, health equity and

continuity of care. Studying chronic conditions’ outcomes entails that detainees should be

conceived as patients proper medical care should be delivered and ways to detention should be

sought.

c) Infectious disease control and prevention

Some of the biggest challenges that are observed in the actual environment of the detention

centers include the following ones. These are some of the main challenges that are associated

with the contained environment of the different detention centers as far as the containment and

prevention of the spread of the infectious diseases is concerned. Immigration Detention Centers

are unhygienic places which are crowded, most of the detainees at one point in their lives

traveled from different parts of the world; these foster contagious diseases to spread easily.

Infection control is most definitely feasible depending on the capacity of the center to: to conduct

thorough evaluation on admission to detect the presence of preexisting diseases; isolate patients

with communicable diseases; treat patients with infections and disease control in terms of

immunization and disinfectant services.

But there are many studies that have pointed out the vices in these aspects in immigration

detainment facilities. Intake screening often does not exceed an assessment of the absence of

P a g e | 92

serious acute diseases and the exclusion of narrowly non-epidemiological diseases, including

tuberculosis. Some action taken are more punitive in nature and detainee do not get encouraged

to report any illness. Shortage of stocks in vaccines and medication affects the ability to reactive

to occasional epidemic while congested and unsanitary facilities promote diseases.

The implications of these failings are portrayed most vividly by the prevalence of cases of

infectious diseases as a social emergency in ordinary conventional modes of detaining and

confining people that pose potential risks to the other residents of various facilities besides

absorbing mammoth sums of money to feed all the health bills required. For instance, mumps

and chickenpox have spread across centers in the border between the United States and Mexico

in the recent past years. COVID-19 cases and deaths in ICE Detention Centers: 9,158 cases and

eight deaths recorded in 2020; the independent monitor wondered if the number was not way

higher than that due to concealment.

There is only one element that critics are willing to accept a decrease in the detained population

and enhancing of the standard through independent supervision to effect the change. Some other

less populated, less endowment-constrained possible solutions like case management of asylum

seekers, and undocumented immigrants via community-based organizations may also decrease

the infection risk. Such reforms have potential to offer means to meet the exigency of infectious

diseases control without surrendering humanitarian immigration policies such as policies

including health check-ups, medical treatment and cleanliness as well as disease control and

health monitoring.

P a g e | 93

d) Reproductive health care

There is also another consideration which is very crucial for women and this we know

sometimes is not provided in immigration detention centers; reproductive health. According to

prior review, reproductive health care and OBGYN services are scarce among detained

immigrants in particular women. A couple of cases reveal that pregnant detainees did not have

adequate prenatal care and no screening for female-associated cancers; limited access to

condoms and emergency contraception; and uncontrolled diseases such as endometriosis. Alas,

the situation does not allow continuing the reproductive care begun in the community prior to

detention, which only exacerbates these issues. Language differences and inability to

accommodate cultural differences, language, and lack of provision of cultural practices in

reproductive matters are other barriers.

The following are some of the reasons that explain why reproductive health disparities exist in

immigrants’ detainment. This show devised that with the expansion of the detention system there

was an expansion of population but; and the clinical staff and amenities have not been expanded

in kind. The structures that are used to confine criminals may not even have the space and or

resources for diagnostic and treatment of reproductive issues. With regard to the patients who

need further treatment, most of these centers apply teleconsultation services rather than inviting

permanent specialists. Off-site specialist visits when are needed are a bit challenging most

importantly in areas of transport and security. in another way, misconceptions on entitlements for

undocumented immigrants may affect other service provisions particularly reproductive health

services in the following ways.

Sever limitations in reproductive health services impact only women and girl’s asylum seekers

and human trafficking survivors in detention. It has been found that trauma, violence, abuse and

P a g e | 94

reproductive health in these groups remains invisible and marginalized in custody. As for these

groups, they are traumatized even by such a measure as detention. Practical self-interest takes

over where reproductive self-adoptions of the health conditions are concerned. To avoid such

matters, the extra psychological counseling for the staff can be incorporated with the sensitivity

training. It could also mean that self and peer advocacy for detained people to get the necessary

reproductive health services out of vulnerability or gain from confinement may have benefits to

detainees.

Improving reproductive healthcare for immigrant detainees requires addressing key barriers: It

has also used to support clinical initiatives, specialty providers, employee education and

development, and trauma care services. There is equally the need to pass laws and policies that

reinforces standards conforming to the spirit of community. Inmates have rights including

continuation of any started treatment, and most important, testing, birth control, prenatal care,

cancer tests, treatment for STIs, and many others while detained. Also, rather important which

cannot go unmentioned is the diversity of culture in as much as reproduction issues are

concerned. That is, detainment conditions should be, in effect, human rights compliant and

recognize the value of reproductive health.

e) Nutrition and dietary considerations

The detained immigrants have a human right to food and food is an important element of the

health of the detained immigrants. Nonetheless, the same studies and narratives of detainees’

lives reveal that they have poor quality, quantity, and choice of food and that culturally

appropriate meals are scarce in immigration detention centers. Particular grievances involve low

energy and nutrient consumption, insufficient access to specialty items, lack of fresh foods and

too much starch, and constant ravenousness due to small portions. For example, a study by

P a g e | 95

Homeland Security Advisory Council issued in 2016 pointed out that detainees were provided

with high starchy and high sugar foods with low nutrient densities – food that provides just half

of the required fruits and vegetables intake. Consequently, particular therapeutic or religious

diets are likely either to be lacking in nutrients or not to be in any way compliant with guidelines.

An investigation undertaken a short while ago showed that more than half of the detainees of

different facilities reported that they were served their special diets, weight loss, and negative

health impacts irregularly. Apart from the calorie content and nutritional value of the food,

restrictions and irregularity of conditions of detention, conditions of detention themselves, affect

digestion and metabolism. These systemic deficiencies, when added to other factors which make

access to health care a challenge, result to such things as malnutrition, gastrointestinal illnesses,

prevalence of chronic diseases and overall decline in physical and psychological well-being.

Lastly, nutrition affects all system in the body and form the basic structure of one’s disease

immunity whether communicable disease or non-communicable diseases. Therefore, problems in

the detention food system worsen actual care deficits and create susceptibilities to acute illness

and chronic disabilities. Some of the advocacy groups have suggested ways and measures on

how advances nutrition and health status within the facilities. The following as the best practices

derived by the panel: Providing clean, whole, unprocessed food items, expanding the

commissary choices/availability, population standards for MNT, religious accommodations,

supervised by nutrition professionals’ quantitative analysis of QoL changes, food quality/variety

and health indicator improvement. This guidance has been made in accordance with the

international human rights standards in Detention Centers. However, to guarantee that detainees

receive adequate and the correct portion of meals at any one time, there is need to reduce the use

of detainment as a punishment. The welfare of detainees cannot be protected since a system is

P a g e | 96

meant for security/penal purpose and not for the rights of detainees to have at least a proper

meal. In conclusion, there is need to respond to those injustices pertaining to enrolments within

the frames of immigration enforcement and policy reform.

f) Medical ethics in detention settings

Medical ethic is becoming a major concern in immigration detention centers as more information

is received of their detestable health care, standard and human rights abuses on detainees.

Detention centers in which immigrants are held for legal processes or while they await their

deportation have been described to as offering substandard or even inadequate medical treatment,

treating detainees with inhumanity against their rights and human dignity during their treatments,

and facilities that aggravate existing medical conditions of detainees.

Concerns are as follows: The following are a number of ways in which detainees suffer from

neglect: detainees are denied necessary medication; detainees have to wait for unreasonably long

to be attended to by a medical practitioner; detainees are restrained during an appointment or

when being treated, which violates the principles and standards of ethics. Another area that

comes under the social determinants of health is the language one uses and discrimination affects

the quality of care and issue of informed consent. Medical negligence or malpractice, missed

opportunities of diagnosis or wrong management of psychiatric conditions provide evidence of

systematic unethical practices. Coming up with sicknesses reveals that the places were

overpopulated and unhygienic. Punitive isolation, used on mentally ill detainees, reveals the

leadership’s nakedly unethical perspective on vulnerable people, who require humanistic,

individualized care.

P a g e | 97

These are stated as ongoing issues in human rights, and as organizations for immigration

detainees claim, owing to disparity between an immigrant detainee and authorities, their

assertion is that, they are predisposed to healthcare exclusion, delay, bias and violation of their

confidentiality. Detained immigrants have a minimum of ethical rights to be healthy, be human

and over their bodies, rights which immigrant detention negates from the detainees. The law does

not require that detention facilities provide for detainees’ needs; however, complaints reveal that

this is not practiced regularly hence lack of provision is a result of negligence. In other words,

detention appears inherently to threaten a substantial measure of compliance with medical ethics

for a diverse, heterogeneous group of detainees who, by reason of their detention, have needs,

rights, and cultures that current insufficient standards cannot satisfy.

Therefore, the liberating topic deals with discrimination, self-governance, fairness, and

rights−the core medical ethic principles that have recently been questioned in America’s vast

immigrant detainment systems where reformists continue to demand fewer and more humane

punitive confinements stressing the centrality of medical ethic. Based on this a priori evidence of

the multitude and diversity of complaints, one gets the idea that the path leading to the detention

medical care will be complex and challenging before it will ascend to today’s ethical standards.

11. OVERSIGHT, MONITORING AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Other criticisms that have been made to immigration detention centers include: Absence of

monitor, over sight and accountability that has resulted to violation of human rights. As more and

more immigrants are detained in detention center, the details about the limited entitlement to

medical care, psychological consultation, legal service, meeting family member and other

essential services are more. There have been some allegations that certain detention centers have

resorted to physical violence and sexual abuse, use of force, solitary confinement by the guards

P a g e | 98

and staff mainly because they lack-trained and supervised. However, there are few data on the

situations and performance of the places of detention.

Whereas, an external structural control and surveillance are required for the safety of detainees

and as for their rights, they are still in deficit. The Immigration agencies and the private prison

corporations that operates the detention centers may not have a standard and a established

internal policy and review for the treatment of detainees. This is also true of external federal,

state and local regulatory agencies who do not visit the organizations under their jurisdiction

often to ensure that the organizations are meeting their policy, legal and contractual obligations

concerning conditions and treatment of detainees. Even more discouraging is the equal manner in

which visits by third-party human right observers are restricted at most of these facilities. Each

of the federal departments entrusted to supervision has not even been able to visit some of the

sites or obtain some information on the conduct and organization of detention operations.

Additional accountability structures are required for the transformation, which is the future

object of a radical overhaul, of the immigration detention system that has grown rapidly and has

significant variations in the conditions of shelters across the United States. To tackle this

challenge, the agencies of detention centers should clearly outline the requirements for services,

health and safety of detainees that must be met by the centers, and concomitant penalties for

centers who ‘perform poorly’ on audit results. Making the data provided by individual detention

facilities regarding the conditions and outcomes more comprehensive and specific is necessary;

improving the safeguards for staff and detainees who disclose abuse. The report should be

produced by the non-affiliated and independent community-based monitoring organizations to

visit the sites. Other considerations also have to do with the ability of immigration judges to

review detention determinations more frequently; a reasonable ground for release in Immigration

P a g e | 99

Law is a clear legal standard. Even if the goal is to convert immigration detention to be rights

compliant, there’s need to reform oversight, monitoring and accountability.

a) National human rights institutions

NHRIs have an important function to act as independent overseers of the immigration detention

facilities for the purpose of reporting or dealing with human rights matters. Due to the

membership to state, NHRIs have a legal mandate to conduct inspections of the detention

facilities, detainee interviews and review of policies, procedures and complains handling

systems. In the course of these monitoring activities, NHRIs get to learn of systemic human

rights violations such as denial of patients’ rights to health, inhuman and degrading treatment

including detention for a long time without trial or being subjected to solitary confinement or

excessive force. NHRIs membership has the responsibility to advice the detention authorities and

to advocate for amendment of policies and laws relating to such issues.

For instance, when comparing the situations in different facilities, NHRIs may encounter a fact

of improper use of segregation that requires further enhancement of the legislative and

supervisory measures of the rights of detainees. As a result, NHRIs in their capacity as

independent institutions become the organs that can be legitimate in the eyes of civil society to

address the governments for accountability’s sake. Also, since NHRIs are rather quasi-

governmental organizations, they are endowed with some investigative powers and means that

NGOs cannot have. For this reason, the former are highly necessary for the complementary

monitoring to the independent monitoring conducted by the human rights organizations.

Furthermore, NHRIs have to participate in communicating knowledge to the public through

reports and media and also contacting with other stakeholders. This persuasive function is

P a g e | 100

realized through the option of thematic reports and investigations of major events where NHRIs

demonstrate information on violations of human rights and contribute to their recognition. In

sum, it was seen that the particular oversight role of NHRIs at domestic level was significant in

respect of the fact that countries appeared to have complied with human rights conventions

regarding immigration detainees. Independent monitoring is for guarantee that the detention

standards of a sort seen in the international are complied with, and for encouraging states to seek

human rights friendly solution for detention where needed. Considering the overall trend towards

more countries embracing immigration detention, NHRIs had to ensure the appropriate

utilization of their mandates with the aim of providing the required oversight and strong focus on

the treatment of detainees.

b) NGO and civil society monitoring

For human rights, civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations are very

central for monitoring of immigration detention centers. They are autonomous agencies with the

authority to pay visits to the detention centers and sit and talk to the detainees, inspect records

concerning detainees and the conditions in the centers. The documents from such organizations

as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have enumerated a number of issues in many

nations’ detention systems which includes the use of force, lack of access to health care, and

legal help, detention without or indefinitely, lack of supervision and responsibility whenever

abuses are evident.

These groups’ activity progresses toward lobbying for sustainable policies regarding forced

detention, as well as for the changes in reporting and disclosure requirements and other

accountability tools. To give an example, after several NGOs of raping in the U. S detention

centers between 2010 and 2016, the Department of Homeland Security created Office of Civil

P a g e | 101

Rights and Civil Liberty for complaints. In the UK, similar revelations of substandard conditions

and treatment resulted into the formation of the independent custody visitors formerly known as

Lay Observers which we are now referring to as the Lay Observers who have legal jurisdictions

of touring the sites and interacting with the detainees.

Volunteer monitoring is another activity of civil society organizations with the purpose of

protecting detainee rights, while paying frequent visits and building a friendly relationship. For

instance, CIVIC monitors immigration detention conditions in Europe, and similar NGOs in the

United States, such as CIVIC, look for volunteers to go and report, for instance, on a weekly

basis. Another is the building connection, a program that aims at reducing the extent to which

detainees are lonely or even become victims. Volunteers are subjected to daily situation and

treatment and can look for the deficient or malarious and insist on improvement. Again, they

provide people who are confined with human comfort. Such a form of civil participation

demonstrates the public interest in human rights as the assessment of the outcomes is made and

incorporated in the reports. The supervision from outside is understood all across the world as

being valuable for proper governance and responsibility for any confinement pattern. Because

detention spaces are not openly visible or observable, that is, they are not in the public domain,

NGOs and civil society bring attention to these veiled bad sites of detention through advocacy,

reporting, and watch-dogging of human rights abuse. Issues and hold them to account, their

intensified scrutiny is supposed to tantalize such facilities into operating more transparently and

to creating humane standard conditions and to meet global human rights benchmarks.

c) UN and regional monitoring mechanisms

There are various measures that United Nations as an international organization and European

Union as a regional organization have established in the monitoring and supervising of

P a g e | 102

immigration detention centers in order to prevent human rights. The most important mechanism

of the UN supervision for compliance with human rights is the Working Group on Arbitrary

Detention which investigates cases of arbitrary deprivation of liberty through detention as well as

immigration detention. The Working Group obtains direct information on detention systems and

assists States on shaping legislations and policies to conform to international human rights

standards. For example, in August 2018 while the Working Group was on a visit of United

Kingdom, the Working Group called on the UK government to provide legal requirements for

proper time-limited immigration detention and measures other than such detention.

Other regional organizations, for example, the European Committee for the Prevention of

Torture, also conduct visits to the facilities where immigrants are held with the aim of assessing

the conditions under which they are kept and the treatment they receive. It has laid down

conventional and criminal law benchmarks and indicators of detention whose aim is to prevent

detainees from being harassed, denied or deprived of medical attention, information and

paralegal assistance. Some of its findings of its visits have been to deplore structural deficiencies

in states like Greece and to observe that detention remains highly overused for asylum seekers

and the so-called irregular migrants. The Inter-American human right systems have developed

the ‘Principles and Best Practices on the Protection of Persons Deprived of Liberty’ whereby

immigration detention should be the measure of last resort. Supervisory organs include the

European Committee which may initiate proceedings concerning country cases and may work in

partnership with national governments in respect to human rights in immigration detention.

About the choices, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has called for community

alternatives to detention, and in its toolkit the organization lists the best practices in the topic.

The Reception Conditions Directive also specifies that detention of the asylum applicants should

P a g e | 103

be exceptional and first of all, where it is possible to apply the measures which are less intrusive

but the standards mentioned vary from one member state to another. It has been alleged that there

is a need for independent supervision and reporting to establish if immigration removal systems

and detention practices conform to human rights and avail rights compliant immigration removal

systems and detention alternatives where lawful under international law. Much has however

remained to be done at international and regional level to enhance the monitoring of use of

Immigration Detention, research on the violations and promotion of regional benchmarks aimed

at right-based management of Immigration Detention Systems.

d) Complaint mechanisms for detainees

Analyzing the possible components of a powerful system of supervision and responsibility, one

of the essential elements is the correct reporting of detainees at detention centers for immigrants.

Detainees must have ready and solo means of expressing their grievances and allegations

concerning their treatment and situations in detention. It is important that internal facility

grievance systems must provide detainees with an opportunity to complain without risking

detainment. SOPs and polices should define standard time horizons that different facilities

should take to handle and investigate complaints thoroughly and the interval that detains should

wait before being offered writing containing outcome and action taken on their complaints. The

basic requirements are that the facilities provide the disabled detainees or those with limited

language to ASL complain as the rest.

Besides, there has to be an independent immigration detention ombudsman at the office level,

which has to consider the complaints that are taken to the higher level. Detention authorities have

to be distinct from Ombudsman office, and funding and reporting have to be arranged in a way to

secure this distinctness. Detention monitoring staff should be professional persons allowed to

P a g e | 104

check the process randomly and independently, review documents and interview detainees and

staff. The investigative activities involve analyzing each of the complaints to consider whether

there are any things that have to be rectified by the detention authorities and then ombudsman

office provides the findings.

Moreover, the facilities should permit other nonprofit organizations within the compound not

offering legal services to detainees to visit and interview. From legal advocacy groups’ continued

input, more serious systematic issues in relation to rights abuse or inhuman environments that

need correction in different centers rather than an isolated incident may be uncovered. When it

comes to the more structural human rights concerns, the greater level of visibility facilitates

policy- and law-makers’ promotion of the necessary changes to the rules and norms regulating

immigration detention. Due to the inability of checking detention authorities, external legal

observers play a significant role of the third branch of monitoring.

When all of these grievance mechanisms are interconnected – facility complaints that allow the

detainee to complain without obstruction, effective self-advocacy mechanisms that are easily

accessible, an independent ombudsman who conducts a detailed investigation of the complaints,

and nonprofit legal advocacy organizations who raise awareness of the ombudsman – then,

immigration detention is almost accountable and cases of detainee rights abuses are minimized.

e) Transparency and access to information

For a long time now, the public has raised valid concerns regarding the poor management of the

immigration detention centers especially in the area of governance of information. Basic among

these advocacy groups and oversight bodies has been in calling for improved reporting on the

state of confinement facilities, prisoners’ population, movement and the use of force, including

P a g e | 105

solitary confinement and the extent of force. Increased external information openness as well as

its accessibility strengthens the correct monitoring of the external environment, which makes it

possible to notice such trends and human rights violations. Through informing the public it

encourages the identification and it applies pressure on policy makers to justify actions.

However, most jurisdictions restrain the release of information regarding operation of detention

center, often, under security and privacy reasons. There are still irregularities in reporting of

center-specific population data, adverse events and affiliation agreements and monitoring

results raising concerns of low transparency in independent attempts to track the demographic

features of the detention usage, policy compliance and the complaints investigation. Such limited

information also conceals information on the actual total detainee populations, the growth and

the causes of such an Increase.

Other strategies that relate to disclosure and complaint mechanisms, points of access and very

strict external regulation and monitoring. It is possible to regard the public reporting of the

facility conditions and populations; transfer statistics and monitoring results as a kind of formal

scrutiny. Extra expectations to release contracts, standards, as well as center-selected population

reports extend the practice of openness. External access makes it possible to observe things

directly and this is useful in increasing the levels of transparency and accountability. The

advocacy groups can easily demand and guarantee that the legal immigrants are given a chance

hence increasing on awareness of the standards exposing the potential of the same regarding the

centers by permitting families, media and other international observer to visit. Continuing to

sustain strong, ‘adequate to the law’ standards of active transparency and open access equality

ensures that such external vigilance persists in the best interest of this supposed mechanism of

accountability.

P a g e | 106

f) Accountability for human rights violations

A lot of emphasis has been accorded to the lack of or minimal accountability for human rights

violations that occur in immigration detention facilities across the world proving that

independence in oversight and proper monitor mechanisms are appropriate in moments of

impropriety. However, there are some systems of immigration detention that lack sufficient

accreditation by outside entity apart from internal, meaning that human rights violation can occur

with impunity. For instance, there was evidence that detainees in some countries’ detention

centers undergo through one or more of the following: tasing, fires, severe and lethal drought,

denial of food and water, death threats, and denial of right to remain silent, medical care, and

legal counsel. Without checks and balances from outside such violations may become the norm

and consistent if not controlled.

Independent monitoring entails that the independent monitoring bodies should be allowed

unfettered access to any part of the immigration detention facilities and any papers in the

facilities. This means that monitors should be doing surprise visits, have powers of inquiry on

grievances and produce reports as well. Besides, governments have to make certain that there is

an authority which receives complaints and punishes organizations that violate such rights once

they are violated. Public accountability is also significant – to ensure that the detention facilities

give regular account of important issues including; solitary confinement, access to legal

representative, cases of self-harm and suicide, and medical care. Where camps for genocide and

mass extermination are in operation, governments have to respond – through changing the

policy, replacing the staff, or by closing down the genocide camps. The following is beyond

doubt: There cannot be a rights-compliant system of immigration detention without outside and

inside surveillance and oversight. Consequently, while monitoring and transparency serve more

P a g e | 107

the function for correction of the ills, which exist in the society as a result of human rights

violations and are also useful in prevention of further violations.

12. REFORM AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Detention centers have come under pressure in many countries recently due to revelations that

detainees live in obscene conditions, lack of supervision and human rights abuses on the

immigrants. At the moment, societies who support human rights and policy makers quite agree

that structural transformation of the system is inevitable in regard to the administration of

immigration detention across countries. Most people now think that detention should not be

severe and damaging as it is very expensive and many are infamous for causing bad health to the

detainees, both in the body and the mind.

Specific actions include improvement of legal norms at the national and international levels

relating to the fulfillment of the immigration detention standards and regimes adopted with

reference to the human rights law. This involves shortening of the period of detention before the

charge has to be brought before a tribunal and ensure provision of increased access to lawyers

and an improving of the standards for the detention agencies. Some of them propose that more

funds should be allocated in order to enhance the usage of ATD programs – release on bail and

parole and community supervision as well as case management models. These programs allow

asylum seekers, and other migrants to reside in communities awaiting their immigration hearings

and with consent, and for less expenses as compared to detention.

However, it should be appreciated that the primary environment in which these measures are to

be put into practice vary in terms of existing regulation, as do the countries in which the

detainees are to be held so implying a country-specific solution. That is why even the countries

P a g e | 108

with greater capacities and profitable resources experience some problems in establishing the

mechanisms for immigration complying with the legislation and human rights, on the other side

being effective. For the change to be sustained it also involves changing people and political

culture to accept human, rights and dignity of migrants as enshrined in the policy. Because of

conflicts, climate change, and other reasons, there will be increased migration pressures as time

goes on; hence, there will be a continual need for the immigration policy and detention systems

to factor in the parties’ human rights obligations. The open and positive dialogue and learning

between the countries could help in progressing the reforms and at the same time could help in

finding the ways and samples. Since immigration is permanent, immigrant detention centers

remain as a large but preventable human rights problem if those involved can mobilize the social

and political will to improve and provide better and humane systems.

a) Best practices in humane detention management

Continuing to think about reform and future development of immigration detention centers

because of human rights, one of the matters that has to be solved is the definition of humane

management of detention centers. Specific recommendations should concentrate on the changes

of the standards for custody with regard to the IHRS. it is appropriate to reform the detention

facilities and procedures from the penal model to care-based model accepting the asylum seekers

and people with no right to citizenship as protected subjects. Among the other ways possible by

the administrators, supervision should be carried out in order to discharge more time taken by the

children in detention and thereby minimize congestion. Great emphasize should be paid to

teaching guards in how to prevent such occurrences and there should be a complete ban on the

overuse of isolation and physical restraints. They have to have the capacity for treatment for all

types of diseases, for all the physical, mental health and reproductive health needs. Thus, there

P a g e | 109

should provide adequate staffing and adequate time for interaction in recreation, outdoors, formal

and informal religion, and work. This ensures that the guards are always to answer for what they

do and the independent committees of oversight do not allow flare up to happen. Explaining their

rights in the detainee’s own language and documenting their rights as well as each of the stages

as simple as possible can ease the worry and minimize concerns. Proposing flexibility on the

time when lunch and snacks can be ingested, if there are special cases of food restrictions for any

of the participants in the activity; offering forms of personal sanitation that are easy to engage

with; and how the participants can get in touch with other resources or pieces of support outside

of the said activity. While ensuring safety of premises and order in an organization, the

administrators should also endeavor to access suitable services for clients of colors, believers,

gays and lesbians and refugees, survivors of terror and other forms of abuse. Of marriage more

advocacy should go into case management programs for communities to reduce the time

detained to find them housing, education, mental health and substance use treatment, food and

other necessities and assistance with reentry for those released. In other words, it is possible to

practice ethical and constructive custody with human rights-aligned standards of human dignity

by increasing the quality of health care, supervision, personnel training, and amenities of

detainees and by committing resources to case management and reintegration programs for the

current standards of social responsibility that states should provide refugees and asylum seekers

with shelter, protection and new opportunities.

b) Technology and innovation in detention alternatives

As there is growing concern in the suffering immigrant undergo in immigration detention

centers, technology and innovation present the chance for change and building of a better system

for immigrants. For example, the electronic monitoring devices allow immigration authorities to

P a g e | 110

monitor the movement of those persons released into the community instead of detaining them. It

has been seen that wearing a wristband fitted with GPS tracking, radio frequency identification,

and voice control features is enough to ensure court appearances and compliance with the law

with no money and social cost equivalent to imprisonment. Pilots of these technologies do show

high appearance rates for immigration check-ins and hearings. Conversely, case management

apps can have other features of informing the receiver of the court dates, making sure that the

receiver logs in at given times, availing information on the available resources in the community,

and providing a platform to communicate with the case manager. Technology assisted case

management seeks to manage cases to address needs and dangers of a case rather than detention

of the client. Again, facial recognition software as an added feature allows the authorities to

authenticate an individual from recorded videos without physical contact. Although the FAC tech

is not yet prevalent, the chance of enhancing the voluntary FAC tech may allow detainees not to

remain in custody when authorities sort out their identity. In the nonprofit sector there are

organizations that promote the use of phone application which the detained as well as the

released immigrants can use to be enlightened on their rights. Perhaps, improvement in the legal

and self-advocacy tools can help bolster human rights protection as other kinds of protection

emerge. Mobile technology also makes it possible to ensure that either through locally

centralized service stations, the immigrants get education, health facilities, shelter, and job

opportunities primarily in the rural areas. All in all, it can be concluded that applying the

technology enhanced measures to the upset of detention rather than confinement is a better

enforcement of immigration laws and compliance with supervision, appearance in the court and

reintegration into the society all in an efficient, fair and inexpensive manner. As such, at the time

that reform of detention is occurring, it is technology and innovation to address flight risks, ties

P a g e | 111

to the community, and individual attributes which can be provided for without ‘standardizing’

detention warehouse conditions which are rapidly becoming antithetical to human rights.

c) International cooperation and burden-sharing

As a result of controversy over human rights abuses in the immigration detention facilities,

debates on the futures of immigration detention system and its policy prospects have turned to

what is now the search for human rights-compliant and reasonable non-criminal measures in the

exercise of immigration control and protection of legitimate government interests for security.

On of the most important issues at the core of these reform discourses is how the international

actors coordinate and might allocate responsibilities for controlling migration. Building on the

global partnership is a more realistic strategy that moves up from the ‘magic bullet,’ which is

when one country is charged with solving a global problem.

Some of the research areas that can imply a multilateral coordination can vary from setting of

standards of care, treatment, and screening of in-detention services based on international human

conventions rights to collaborative funding of non-custodial community- based models of

detention alternatives to migration causes through foreign aid and international development. For

example, United States together with the Central American countries should focus on the push

factors that make individuals from the Northern Triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala

and Honduras to migrate, which include poverty, violence, and corruption. Or it could

proactively and substantively involve Middle Eastern and African source countries regarding

how the EU can assist in the advancement of legal migration hence minimizing the number of

refugees that flock the seas in attempt to get to the European Union. The effect is that when there

are shared responsibilities, there are more opportunities to collectively address unlawful

P a g e | 112

migration and all the parties can lean on the strength of the other where the management of

asylum cases in a dignified manner is concerned.

As the literature on the redesign and reintegration of immigration detention for human rights

expands, the global cooperation will advance to write joint solutions. These are still major issues

for which I believe there is still no one optimal way of addressing – but with collective

progressive action from governments around the world, there are steps that can be taken to

improve minimum conditions for detainees, increased and improved financing for AoIs and more

systematic thinking and focus on issues that contribute to why people migrate – in other words,

gradually adopting better and moral, effective and people-orientated approaches to migration

policies of a global However, it begins with the setting up of those relations between

governments because the nature, drivers and effects of current migration require collaborative

response anchored on principles that are provided for under international human rights law.

d) Policy reforms and legislative changes

It is possible to list several policy reforms and legislative adjustments that will improve the

monitoring and accountability of immigration detention centers and protect immigration

detainees’ rights, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) could modify the policies to

allow outside monitor of detention standards through granting more access to the detention

centers for members of the community, nonprofit lawyers, health care workers and religious

leaders. Whereas at the moment outside access and supervision is closely restricted. Of course, it

would be possible to offer detainees for interviews to experts; to verify these situations

personally and make recommendations regarding the policy change for every facility on the

regular basis, at least if these facilities were opened for outside scrutiny more frequently.

P a g e | 113

Simultaneously with the growth of access, new legislation could require general minimal

standards of basic care covering all immigration detention facilities regarding such fundamental

rights as outdoor time, medical and mental health treatment, telephone access, as well as solitary

confinement provisions. It would establish the legally enforceable instruments that are far more

precise than normal internal policy goals that may be or are not pursued at all let alone in a

random fashion by the operators. It could also involve bills that require that all contracts between

detention facilities and their operators to be released via the Freedom of Information Act which

would afford some amount of access to the agreements signed between them and service

providers including the private prison industry who are, to date, exempted from the freedom of

information act.

Administrative changes in the DHS OIG and the OCRCL would enhance the legislative and

investigating abilities of the bodies to visit the facilities, review the grievance files and

interrogate detainees. More funding for site visit, so that more dedicated site inspectors and

review staff can go to COM can and will help ‘‘oversight offices and legislative authority to

require changes rather than just recommend changes to voluntary compliant ICE and facility

operators. Further reforms could therefore be achieved under conditions of increased scrutiny,

especially with regard to the policy changes and the new legislation on immigrant detention if

there are more proportional and stricter supervisory measures, higher and stricter requirements

for disclosure and/or legally binding human rights standards.

e) Public awareness and advocacy strategies

Immigration advocacy groups and non-government organizations are in an ideal position of

demanding for the change of the policies on immigration detention. To that extent, through

conveying the message that people are suffering in detention centers or that the current

P a g e | 114

immigration policies do not work, the advocacy groups may shift the attitudes of the public. For

example, the Detention Watch Network gathers the reports and data on the immigration detention

to raise the issues including no right to counsel, health issues, and detention for profit. Similarly,

the mainstream advocacy groups have also launched social media campaigns for example the

#StoptheQuotas to show their disapproval for mandatory detention bed quotas. Supporting public

involvement in decision making through petitions, contacting their representatives or

demonstrations also assists in maintaining reform programs. Some groups also aim at making the

issue as self-centered as possible and the former detainees narrate to the people their experiences

and how they suffered. Other advocacy group supported peer support programs can also assist

the former detainees to transform into advocates on their own.

Some of the techniques and tactics that advocacy groups have employed to pressure for

alteration of the current federal, state, and local policies regarding detention of immigrants. Legal

actions have been made to challenge unconstitutional confinement policies, secure the right to

bond proceedings for AI detainees without probable cause, and to prosecute the government for

deaths in custody. It has also brought some meaningful victories—advocacy groups were able to

help shut down a disputed family confinement camp in Texas in 2009; they also helped to

pressure the Obama administration to slowly phase out the utilization of private prisons for

immigration detention in 2016. In future, advocacy will entail the development of alliances, the

ability to push for legal reform at the grass root level and provision of services to immigrants and

can be a powerful outside force for positive change with sustained, intentional and intentional

processes of Advocacy organizations, a process of turning a secretive, punitive system into one

that fulfils people’s rights and respects their humanity.

P a g e | 115

f) Balancing security concerns with human rights

Detention centers face high interest paid on them due to evidence of violation of human rights to

the detainees, however, the officials of governments argue that such facilities are relevant for

safeguarding the nation’s security and controlling the influx of people into foreign territories. Of

all the dilemmas, probably the most difficult is how to secure sufficient measures of protection,

without compromising the clients’ basic standards of decency. Some of the possible policy

implications may involve treatment of offenders other than incarceration, improving monitoring

of the centers and legal reform to establishment of minimal standards for prisoners assisting in

reducing human rights concerns with reference to detaining people while not affecting

immigration regulation. Refugee and asylum seeker community-based supervision and case

management, as well as report on compliance rates, help with access to counsel. Similarly, there

might be analogous provisions applicable to the undocumented immigrants waiting for

immigration court hearing. Second, most of the detainees held in detention centers are not threats

to public security but are in breach of civil immigration laws. If the detention power is limited

and it is used only for threats can limit the per capita crimes against human rights.

Another mechanism of improving the system is by reforming independent monitoring and

supervising. It encompasses cases of denial of adequate health care, lack of adequate mental

health attention, solitary confinement and even in customary killings in the detentions. Increased

third party audits, increased access of Ombudsman to the facilities and enhanced reporting of

conditions of the facilities may raise the level of oversight and lower the infringement on rights.

There are some legislators who have called for establishment of an independent agency to

oversee only detentions centers.

P a g e | 116

The global society has endeavored to develop legally binding specifications of minimum

standards of human rights in a bid to discourage such violations in the future. Newer guidelines

state the conditions and services a facility must meet for AMI but do not have antagonistic

measures to punish defaulting facilities, but among them, is a reduction in federal funds.

Nevertheless, the actual measurable norms which would allow detainees and advocates to appeal

to the legal system for violation of these standards would protect centers from ignoring some

best practices and indulging themselves in routine human rights abuses. It is also important to

know that any changes in the legislation will be possible only with the account of security

concerns and real fiscal constraints; the same time, there are reasonable measures which do not

violate the human dignity while protecting the borders.

JHR 425 -IMMIGRATION DETENTION CENTERS HUMAN RIGHTS CONCERNS AND ALTERNATIVES

Students also viewed