It’s important, however, to be clear about both what is going on and what ought to be done about it. The DHS has been crying out that it is “under-resourced” and thus unable to release people swiftly from these border cells, which are intended to be used for a maximum of only three days. It will try to use the public’s outrage over conditions in the cells to make other forms of longer-term detention – in family detention centres and immigration jails – seem like humane alternatives.
The DHS has already attempted to blame the long waits in short-term Border Patrol facilities on the fact there are not enough beds in the longer-term Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities. That’s almost certainly a disingenuous justification because there’s evidence ICE isn’t nearly as overstretched as it claims. (The largest family detention centre has consistently had hundreds of empty beds this year.) But by talking about this as a resources issue, the DHS will try to convince people that the problem is a lack of adequate facilities in which to detain people rather than the overuse of detention itself. With poor oversight of Border Patrol operations, increasingly prolonged detention periods for migrants will become normalised, leading to people being tortured for weeks instead of days, and then months instead of weeks.
The Trump administration doesn’t necessarily mind people pointing out that conditions are squalid and appalling. Why? Because that helps it make the case for building more jails. Democrats can very easily fall into the trap of making the right’s own argument for it. We say: “Look at these horrible overcrowded border cells.” They reply: “Yes, how awful, that’s why we need bigger detention facilities where people can be held for longer.” And Democrats agree to a giant new funding package for border enforcement.
People who are detained need to be detained humanely, with access to soft beds, good food, soap, showers, leisure. That should go without saying. But “detain people humanely” is a pitifully inadequate rallying cry for those who care about migrant rights. The past decade has seen the growth of a vast system of detention that never existed before. The presumption that migrants must be jailed is becoming increasingly entrenched, despite the fact that border crossing numbers were higher in the mid-2000s than they are now, and despite a total lack of evidence that immigrants pose any danger to the rest of the public.
It’s also worth pointing out that some other ways to reduce operational strain on the border will also make the situation far worse for migrants. For example, the Trump administration has recently been expanding its new “Remain in Mexico” programme. Under this policy asylum-seekers are forced to remain in dangerous Mexican border towns rather than being allowed entry to the US. Keeping asylum-seekers from coming in the first place is certainly one way to reduce the number in custody, but it doesn’t make their lives any better.
Always be clear on what the problem is: it’s that large numbers of people who should be entitled to seek a decent life in the US, the way generations have before, are being turned back or caged. Once they are here they are at risk of having their lives torn apart and their families taken from them. The progressive position is not to jail people in slightly better conditions, but free them.
