New York Times exposé on immigrant deaths in custody

Sixty-six immigrants died in custody during those three years, according to the scantly detailed list, compiled by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in January under pressure from Congress to provide an accounting of its treatment of prisoners. At that time, the House passed a billwhich later stalled in the Senatethat would have required states receiving specific federal funds to report deaths of prisoners.

The Times article (Few Details on Immigrants Who Died in Custody, by Nina Bernstein, May 5, 2008) describes the immigrant detention system as a patchwork of federal centers, county jails and privately run prisons that has become the nations fastest-growing form of incarceration. The prisons, through which some 330,000 people pass each year according to ICE, are run with little oversight and little documentation.

Within this system, thousands of immigrants are locked up for days, months or years while the government decides whether to deport them, the Times notes. Some have no valid visa; some are legal residents, but have past criminal convictions; others are seeking asylum from persecution. Many who are swept up in ICE raids have committed no crime beyond simply overstaying their visas, and others are needlessly imprisoned while their citizenship applications are processed in the government system.

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