The Hill News

In her recent op-ed, “Congress should get serious about immigration detention facilities,” Annie Sovcik gets one point right: there’s room for improvement in our nation’s detention system. But the Obama Administration and Human Rights First prescribe the wrong remedies.

The United States prides itself on treating people with the utmost respect and dignity. But the Obama Administration’s new detention manual goes above and beyond commonsense to accommodate illegal and criminal immigrants in federal custody. And the administration left out crucial stakeholders in the drafting process of its new manual: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention offic! ers, advocates for immigration law enforcement, and advocates for American taxpayers who will ultimately have to pay for the new standards.

The administration wasted no time in putting their new standards into practice. Immediately following the release of the new detention manual, ICE opened up a new, state-of-the-art detention facility in Karnes City, Texas. The new detention facility was built with specifications set by ICE, which involved limited public scrutiny and no congressional oversight.

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