Writ­ten for The Media Consortium

After decades of mis­guided poli­cies and patch­work prac­tices, the high human costs of our dis­or­dered immi­gra­tion sys­tem are only start­ing to emerge. Stricter immi­gra­tion poli­cies and over­crowded deten­tion cen­ters aren’t mak­ing our streets safer or our social ser­vices more accessible.

Instead, mount­ing evi­dence shows that our immi­gra­tion poli­cies are just cre­at­ing a space for immi­grants to be brutalized—socially, finan­cially and phys­i­cally. From reports of sex­ual abuse inside of deten­tion cen­ters to news of legal res­i­dents being denied social ser­vices, the inef­fec­tive­ness of the pre­vail­ing sys­tem has never been more appar­ent, nor the need for reform so great.

Women and chil­dren sex­u­ally assaulted in deten­tion cen­ters

As Michelle Chen writes at Col­or­lines, alle­ga­tions of sex­ual abuse within a Texas deten­tion cen­ter have sparked inves­ti­ga­tions by the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union and Human Rights Watch. Accord­ing to reports, a guard at the T. Don Hutto Res­i­den­tial Cen­ter sex­u­ally assaulted sev­eral women while trans­port­ing them prior to their release.

Human Rights Watch, which this week released a com­pre­hen­sive report on sex­ual abuse in deten­tion, regards the inci­dent as rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a larger prob­lem that affects both women and chil­dren caught in the web of the deten­tion sys­tem. From the report:

Chil­dren, too, have appar­ently been sub­ject to alleged abuse in Texas immi­gra­tion deten­tion facil­i­ties, although their care is over­seen by the US Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices (DHHS), rather than ICE. Nine Cen­tral Amer­i­can chil­dren, one of whom was iden­ti­fied as 16 years old, reported sex­ual and phys­i­cal abuse while in the cus­tody of Texas Shel­tered Care […] the chil­dren were fon­dled, groped, and forced to per­form oral sex on one guard, and some were beaten by other guards.

While sex­ual assault is per­va­sive within the prison sys­tem, women in the immi­gra­tion deten­tion are par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­a­ble. The threat of depor­ta­tion and the lack of com­pre­hen­sive over­sight of deten­tion cen­ters (many of which are oper­ated by for-profit cor­po­ra­tions rather than ICE itself) both con­tribute to a cul­ture of impunity. The fact that most indi­vid­u­als detained in ICE facil­i­ties are non-criminals only ren­ders the sit­u­a­tion even more reprehensible.

As Chen points out, it is likely many vic­tims of abuse have already been deported, were offered no recourse, and have no incen­tive to report the crimes now.

Mar­gin­al­iz­ing undoc­u­mented vic­tims of vio­lent crime

Out­side of deten­tion cen­ters, immi­grant vic­tims of vio­lent crime are sim­i­larly hand­i­capped by the jus­tice sys­tem. While U-visas are avail­able to undoc­u­mented crime vic­tims who coop­er­ate with pros­e­cu­tors, Elyse Foley of the Wash­ing­ton Inde­pen­dent reports that such visas are issued incon­sis­tently and at the dis­cre­tion of local law enforcement.

In Mari­copa County, Ari­zona (the land of Sher­iff Joe Arpaio) for­mer Attor­ney Gen­eral Andrew Thomas allegedly ignored numer­ous requests for U-visas because he believed that undoc­u­mented immi­grants were try­ing to use them to stay in the country.

Such pol­i­tick­ing on the part of local law enforce­ment can have dis­as­trous con­se­quences, par­tic­u­larly in Ari­zona, where Arpaio’s aggres­sive polic­ing of immi­grants has cre­ated a cul­ture of fear. Local immi­grant rights groups now claim that migrants are refus­ing to report even vio­lent crimes com­mit­ted against them for fear of being arrested for their immi­gra­tion status.

Crim­i­nal­iz­ing immi­grants clogs the sys­tem

The impunity with which crimes are com­mit­ted against immi­grants, both in and out of deten­tion, isn’t likely to end as long as our immi­gra­tion sys­tem remains over­crowded and mis­man­aged. But, as Jim Loebe writes over at Alter­Net, “real reform is still a long way off.” The gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to increas­ingly crim­i­nal­ize immi­gra­tion vio­la­tions. Cit­ing a new paper by the Global Deten­tion Project, Loebe argues that more peo­ple, not less, are going to end up in deten­tion in com­ing years, in spite of the president’s promise of reform.

Cer­tainly, the Obama administration’s enforce­ment pro­grams, from expand­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Secure Com­mu­ni­ties pro­gram to the new bor­der secu­rity bill, have been suc­cess­ful at detain­ing and deport­ing record num­bers of undoc­u­mented immi­grants. But in spite of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s assur­ances that his pro­grams only tar­get dan­ger­ous immi­grants, the major­ity of those deported and in deten­tion have no crim­i­nal records. Our bro­ken sys­tem even penal­izes refugees and asy­lum seek­ers, many of whom find them­selves incar­cer­ated for months or years while their cases are processed.

The unex­pected impact of health care reform

In this anti-immigrant cli­mate, legal immi­grants and their Amer­i­can chil­dren are also fac­ing unprece­dented chal­lenges, even as other cit­i­zens are enjoy­ing greater security.

At The Amer­i­can Prospect, Maria C. Abas­cal argues that, while health care reform clearly excludes undoc­u­mented immi­grants, it also hurts legal immi­grants in less obvi­ous ways. Not only are legal res­i­dents sub­ject to a five-year wait­ing period to qual­ify for Med­ic­aid (mean­ing low-income migrants and their chil­dren will likely remain unin­sured), some ana­lysts also believe that “health reform reduces the like­li­hood of immi­gra­tion reform because it sig­nif­i­cantly increases the fis­cal cost of amnesty.”

While the anti-immigrant sen­ti­ment that infused the health care debate ear­lier this year cer­tainly sug­gested that reform wouldn’t be kind to the undoc­u­mented, few could have guessed that the Afford­able Care Act would impact legal migrants and their Amer­i­can chil­dren so unfor­tu­nately. It begs the ques­tion: Should com­pre­hen­sive immi­gra­tion reform becomes a real­ity, what kind of unin­tended con­se­quences might it bring, and who might it ulti­mately hurt?

This post fea­tures links to the best inde­pen­dent, pro­gres­sive report­ing about immi­gra­tion by mem­bers of The Media Con­sor­tium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Dias­pora for a com­plete list of arti­cles on immi­gra­tion issues, or fol­low us on Twit­ter. And for the best pro­gres­sive report­ing on crit­i­cal econ­omy, envi­ron­ment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Con­sor­tium, a net­work of lead­ing inde­pen­dent media outlets.

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