Houston Chronicle: More detained immigrants may be released

[Heidi]

Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau
Oct. 6, 2009, 8:36PM

WASHINGTON — Immigration authorities plan to move potentially thousands more non-violent immigrants awaiting deportation proceedings out of costly prisons and jails and into community monitoring programs — which could include using converted hotels and nursing homes as housing.

Already, more than 19,000 immigrants are in so-called “alternative to detention” programs and are subject to telephonic reporting, global positioning tracking using devices such as ankle bracelets, curfews, unannounced home visits and employment verification.

“This is a system that encompasses many different types of detainees, not all of whom need to be held in prison-like circumstances or jail-like circumstances,” said Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano.

<snip>

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE, detains nearly 400,000 foreign nationals on suspected immigration violations each year at a cost of $2.4 billion.

Read more

[TexasObserver]

1. Recommend. It's a step.

[Heidi]

2. It's a step, it's true, and one I support. But I wonder how successful this approach will be.

A significant segment of the prison industrial comnplex relies on the detention of undocumented US residents. I know of "jails that fear built" that would be nowhere near capacity empty were it not for federal contracts to hold undocumented residents as well as state and county agreements to hold prisoners from outside those jails' local jurisdictions.