User:Ermurdo/sandbox

Copied from Wikipedia Article: Immigration detention in the United States

ICE has acknowledged that its system of immigration detention needs an "overhaul." In 2009, it issued a report citing steps it planned to take “immediately,” including hiring a medical professional to review medial complaints and establishing an Office of Detention Oversight (ODO), which will be independent from ERO and will report detainees grievances. U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano stated that alternatives to detention (ATD) will be provided for immigrants who have no criminal convictions as a part of a series of new reforms planned for the country’s immigration detention system. These alternatives include housing immigrants at “converted hotels, residential facilities or place[ing them] on electronic ankle bracelets for monitoring.” In 2016, California State Senator Ricardo Lara from California and co-sponsors the Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC) and Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC) introduced a bill Dignity not Detention, SB 1289, intended to curtail the practice of detaining immigrants for profit. Currently private prisons are making a substantial profit detaining immigrants. The bill would also ensure that detainees are treated fairly and humanely. SB 1289 was passed in California August 30, 2016, but Governor Jerry Brown vetoed it.
 * Another alternative to detention is to allow detainees to reside with their families while their cases are investigated - so long as they are determined to be of no public-safety risk.
 * Enforcing such alternatives to detention will allow for a decrease in the average daily cost of detainees in immigration detention centers: average costs can decrease to as low as 70 cents from the current average of $159 that ICE spends every day for each detainee.
 * Estimates suggest that the decrease in average daily cost of detainees will allow taxpayers to save $1.44 Billion annually.

Copied from Wikipedia Article: Immigration detention in the United States

Although it hasn't become public knowledge until recently, it has been recorded that transgender detainees face many hardships while held in private detention centers. Transgender detainees have reported that many of them have requested hormonal treatment, yet were never provided with such access to hormones while in private detention centers. The SPLC has conducted a thorough investigation on the living conditions of these private institutions, and have suggested that transgender detainees who had previously been subjected to hormonal therapies, should be allowed to continue these hormonal therapies while in detention centers. The SPLC also found that transgender detainees are especially vulnerable to receiving a lack of both mental and medical care while being held within these private facilities. Furthermore, transgender immigrants held within some of these private detention centers, such as Prairieland, are specifically housed in a separate facility from all other immigrants, in order to remain under watchful protection. This visible segregation has resulted in many transgender immigrants wondering if such a specific housing unit causes more harm than good. Even with the availability of a separate transgender unit, some transgender detainees request to be placed with the male population, as they fear that stigma may possibly arise as a result from being separated from the normal population. Investigations of the conditions under which queer detainees (LGBT) live in has resulted in an overwhelming plea for reformation, suggesting that these individuals do not receive adequate protection, care, and housing. After investigating the conditions under which transgender detainees live in within these facilities, the SPLC generated a series of potential improvements that can be made to better provide for the safety and comfort of these transgender individuals.

The SPLC's recommendations aim to ensure transgender individuals' well-being is prioritized, whether it be their mental health or physical safety. As mentioned above, transgender detainees face increased adversity and hardship while being held in private detention centers. One remedy that the Department of Homeland Security employs in its detention centers to suppress this increased adversity is the use of solitary confinement for individuals who are at risk in the general populations. Nonetheless, the SPLC believes solitary confinement is not a satisfactory alternative to protecting transgender individuals; instead, transgender individuals, and other at-risk groups, should face more appropriate alternatives or even be released altogether. The SPLC holds this belief because previous research suggests that solitary confinement has adverse emotional and physical effects on individuals. Furthermore, the SPLC recommends that transgender individuals are given more of a voice as to whether they are placed into male or female holding populations, since self-identification is an important component of mental health. The detainees' self-identification should therefore hold weight alongside contradictory legal documents or their respective anatomies. Lastly, the SPLC recommends that transgender detainees be given the option to be both searched in private and searched by an officer of the gender the detainees feel most comfortable with.